


Love in Twelve Acts

by sparxwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, Gen, Hotter Than Hell fanworks challenge, M/M, Memories, Samifer - Freeform, Time Travel, Unrequited Love, Wings, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:29:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard not to love someone when you know their life story. Lucifer, like all angels, can travel in time; what he sees in the past changes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [dogsnames](http://dogsnames.tumblr.com) as part of the [Hotter Than Hell](http://fuckyeahsamlucifer.tumblr.com/tagged/hth2013) fanworks challenge being hosted over at [fuckyeahsamlucifer](http://fuckyeahsamlucifer.tumblr.com). Prompts: "Lucifer like all angels, can go back in time and have an effect on the chain of events. How does he use this power? Does he try and convince Sam early or just watch over him?" and "southern gothic".
> 
> Fanmix can be found [here](http://8tracks.com/sparxflame/love-in-twelve-acts) on 8tracks. There's a song per chapter on it, and all of them have lyrics that relate to what happens in that particular chapter, which particular part of Sam's life Lucifer will be seeing, so you can have fun guessing what's ahead!

Entering Nick is- painful. Not because he is human, but because he is imperfect. It pains Lucifer to speak so of his now-vessel – because although Nick is human, he has also been intelligent and kind enough to offer his body up for a higher cause, to offer himself to Lucifer, and Lucifer is well aware that that is a sacrifice to be honoured – but it is true.

He is an archangel’s vessel, but there is a thinness to his spirit, a corruption in the bloodline somewhere several generations back that has left him fractured in some places and brittle in others. The connections Lucifer needs to anchor himself there, the space he needs to fit his wings and the points where he must join to his vessel… many are either missing or flawed. He can fix some of them, improvise with others, but it is a botched job at best. This vessel will be even more temporary than he had hoped, and the thought irritates him as he works to integrate himself fully with the human flesh.

Around him, Nick screams.

It takes only a handful of heartbeats for him to pull the vessel under his control and gather his Grace, a handful of heartbeats of agony for the human sharing headspace with an archangel before Lucifer is capable of cocooning him Grace and sending him deep asleep, nestled warm and safe (or as safe as it is possible for an archangelic vessel’s consciousness to be) and dreaming of his lost wife and child. Even so, it upsets Lucifer – he had not wanted to hurt Nick, not after what the human had given him.

But, he supposes, many people will be hurt by the time he is done with this world. _Many_ people. A few seconds of agony by one of the few humans undeserving of pain is a small price to pay for this first, magnificent step on his way to victory.

With Nick successfully quieted and settled, protected as his duty as an archangel calls on him to do, he can move on to exploring his vessel.

He rolls his shoulders, flexes his fingers, human skin and flesh and bone warm and strange, a case around him and a blanket over his shoulders at the same time. Part of him recoils from it, from the heaviness and the stench of death it carries with it like a shroud – but part of him stretches towards it, reaches for the warm comfort of it, the freedom it gives him. He is in conflict, confused and overwhelmed and disgusted all with a single breath.

He has never needed, or wanted, to breathe before.

With a sigh, a flare of Grace against what is both his prison and his protection, he spreads his wings. They are invisible to his human eyes, shielded – he has no use for a blinded vessel – but he can feel them, ragged edged and glowing at his back. How peculiar that his true form flows to fit his vessel so neatly, the bits which overhang slotting into stereotypes that are so very human, even if they cannot see them; circular halo like a collar, feathered wings torn and broken.

It grates at him, his Father’s last cosmic joke, that he should be forced inside a human and made a mockery of in order to overturn everything his Father stands for. But he is patient, determined, single-minded. A millennia or ten in the Cage saw to that, saw his purpose sharpened to a diamond point – nothing will stand in his way now. Not even his Father.

Vessel still, wings stretched wide, passing through the ephemerality that the walls of Nick’s house have become, Lucifer casts out through the universe, searching. Past, present, future – they’re all the same to him. Future, maybe less so, a little cloudier and murkier because of Free Will, because of _humanity_ , but still a place he can go. Nothing, nowhere in creation, is out of bounds to an archangel.

It has been a long time since he has last stretched his wings, no room for flying in the Cage, and it seems fitting that his first true flight will be the one that takes him to his true vessel.

Or it would be, if he could find him.

Sam’s trail shines bright, a beautiful glow that pulls Lucifer like a beacon, stretching over the decades his vessel’s life has so far spanned. When he looks to the past, it is bright and focused, strong, like a single thread of spun silk amidst the fog of ordinary lives – up until an hour ago, maybe two. Then, it disappears, lost in the grey mist around it. Far in the future, ten years, maybe more, there is a hazy sight of it – a possibility of reappearance, maybe, but not certain enough for him to stake a journey on it. He is still tired from his rising, still weak in his newly-acquired vessel, and to make the future solid and tangible enough for him to visit will take more energy out of him than he can afford to give on the basis of a possibility.

And so, instead, he looks to the past. To the glowing trail that Sam’s soul weaves through him, so short in the view of all of history, everything he can see, but so bright. So beautiful. As a rule, he loathes humans, loathes the simplicity and the aggression and the baseness of them, loathes everything that makes them ugly; and everything that makes them beautiful, too, free will and independent thought and choice and opinions, every wonderful and precious gift his Father chose to bestow on creatures grubbing naked in the mud and not on his Host. As an exception, though, he loves Sam.

Sam is his, in a way that defies explanation. Not as a precious object to be possessed and greedily hoarded, not as a beautiful artwork to be displayed and admired – although Sam is both precious and beautiful, in Lucifer’s eyes – but as something unique and unprecedented: something his Father had made just for him. Sam is one thing that is entirely and truly his in all of creation, the one thing his Father cannot take from him.

In Sam, the same freedom and instinct and wildness that make other humans disgusting simply make him shine all the brighter, because they match all those traits that Lucifer craves for himself.

And someone – someone has conspired to hide that brightness from him. Sam’s soul no longer shines; he is not dead, in neither Heaven nor Hell, or Lucifer would know. Someone has taken his true vessel, his most perfect possession, his final, beautiful present from his Father, away from him.

God have mercy on whoever has done so.

(There will be no mercy on them if they have hurt Sam, if they have damaged his vessel in any way. He will burn them to the ground, erase their name and that of their ancestors from the books of human history, destroy them completely and utterly. No one will hurt Sam. No one.)

(Not even himself.)

With a single beat of his wings, he is airborne, floating high above the world and looking down. Here, cocooned in the stars, the Earth is even more tiny and fragile than he remembered it. Swathed in clouds, oceans churning, land alive with humanity… And even up here, Sam’s soul shines bright through the past, crisscrossing trails of silver scattered across the continent they call North America. It calls to Lucifer, beckons him – and who is he to resist?

Flying through time is more difficult than crossing space. Lucifer’s wings span galaxies, when he wants them to, have constellations woven into the fabric of a single feather and planets at the tip of each of his pinions. He can cross the universe with a single wingbeat, should he so choose.

Time is not so malleable. It fights, like flying against elastic – forever wanting to regain its original shape, force him back to where he has come from. Travelling to the past requires a determination and a violence few angels possess, to puncture through the membrane that seeks to fling them back to their present.

Lucifer has never been left wanting for either of those characteristics.

He traces the thread of Sam’s life backwards, down through the echoes and whispers of the past, until he reaches its genesis, two trails of pale possibility merging to form a new trail, bright white and glistening with newness. That is where he will go, to the beginning of it, the birth of his true vessel. He has nowhere else to go, after all, nothing more pressing to do than find Sam – and right now, in this time, that is not something he can do.

His true vessel’s history will, at worst, provide a pleasing distraction as he adapts to his vessel and allows his Grace to heal where he has ripped it open to join with Nick’s flesh. At best, it will give him clues for where to find his true vessel, a possible pattern or marker he can use to work out what has hidden Sam and how he can find him.

Mind made up, he spreads his wings a little wider, nudges at far-away planets with the tips of them to make space, nestling himself more firmly within the universe. He turns his eyes to that single, brilliant point in history, calling him like a beacon, and beats his wings against the drag of time with a determination that borders on exhilaration.

If he were human, he would be smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

When he lands – an indefinite amount of time later, because time becomes a rather pointless way of measuring things when you’re travelling through it – his wings are trembling and his vessel aches, the strain of pushing and pushing and _pushing_ wearing him down, but he feels more fiercely _alive_ than he has since long before the Cage. Possibly since the first time he learned to spread his wings, him and Michael teetering fledglings on the edge of Heaven and looking out at the all-consuming blackness below and above and around, and then whooping as they flung themselves out into the starless void.

It’s only when he’s shook himself a little (instinctively trying to work the stiffness out without really knowing how) and folded his wings safely back into his current vessel (feeling his body- _the_ body, and it’s remarkable how quickly he’s come to think of it as his, tear a little inside under the strain), that he bothers to look around.

He seems to be outside a hospital. They’re something he’s seen, whilst observing humanity from the darkness of his Cage, and although he has a practical knowledge of them – they are where humans go when their bodies are seriously hurt and cannot fix themselves, weak and frail as they are – he has little understanding of their nuances. Quite why his vessel is here, on the day of his birth, escapes him.

Unless Sam is hurt.

The thought makes something twist in the belly of his vessel and he frowns, annoyed with the hormones and chemicals and electrical impulses this body throws around whenever he thinks something. His vessel does not seem to realise that his thoughts are not its own. He’s sure the involuntary reactions will cease, given time, but for now they are an unwanted distraction – even the thought of Sam being hurt makes the vessel’s heart rate increase, sends adrenaline rushing through its veins.

(Sam is _his_. His gift, his. The mere idea of someone being presumptuous enough to damage his gift…)

The hospital is busy, but no one takes much notice of him as he works his way through the long corridors. There are signs, too many signs, for many different things he is unfamiliar with – Nick knows them, he has no doubt, and a quick shift through his memory would provide plenty of answers, but Lucifer does not need the signs. Sam’s soul shines bright through the pale pastel walls of the building, enough of a beacon that Lucifer can find him merely by following its light.

His search leads him to a near-empty ward, somewhere on the second floor of the hospital. Only one bed is occupied, a woman half-asleep on a bed in the corner with an infant – _Sam_ , he realises, and his vessel’s heart seems to tighten in his chest at the thought of being so close to his vessel – and another bed still messy from its previous occupant, not yet stripped and remade.

The woman is beautiful, he supposes, despite the signs of exhaustion and pain evident

There is a radio on her bedside, antenna sticking up into the air, volume dialled down low. He’s not sure which station is playing, but the song that echoes from it is strange, balancing a line between angry and melancholy. “ _-the Lord’s gonna come for your first-born son (his hair’s on fire and his heart is burning), go to the river where the water runs (wash him deep where the tides are turning)-”_

He has never understood humans and their obsession with music, the emotions and connotations they attach to it, but still, it seems even to him a somewhat inappropriate song to be playing just after the birth of a child. Then again, it is a radio station – the music it plays cannot be controlled. Perhaps the song it was playing beforehand was happier.

“Oh,” says the woman, startling out of her trance and distracting him; her eyes are now open and watching him with something approaching concern – not because of him, but for him, as if she is worried he might be distressed. “Did you come here to see Margritte? She left an hour or two ago, she’s probably home now… I’m sorry.”

He assumes Margritte is the owner of the recently-vacated bed. “No. I- I did not come to see Margritte.” His voice, the voice he now has because of his vessel, shocks him a little as it comes out of his mouth. He had heard Nick speak, of course, before, but to think that voice is now his…

“Oh,” she says again, and this time there is a little more suspicion in her tone, a little less sympathy. Understandable. She is caring for her new-born young, it is only natural for her to be anxious about exposing her child to strange men. “Are you… lost, then?”

“…No,” he says eventually, “I am… waiting.” Because that much is true, at least. Waiting for his power to return. Waiting to be able to find his vessel. Waiting for the end, where he will battle his brother and one of them will kill the other in cold blood, because It Is Written. His whole _existence,_ after the Fall, has been nothing but waiting.  
The woman’s expression brightens again, reassured. “Your wife’s in labour? Congratulations!”

He accepts her words with an even smile, and a slight dip of his head. Her assumption is incorrect, but Lucifer never claimed to always tell the truth – just to never lie. Failing to correct someone is not lying. “Your son is very beautiful,” he says, instead, taking a step forward whilst trying to keep his body language as neutral and non-threatening as possible. He does not want to cause a scene. “What’s his name?”

“Sam,” says the woman, smiling at the compliment. “I’m Mary. And you are?”  
“Samael.” He tries to convince himself he says it because Lucifer is not an acceptable answer and he is not willing to lie, but it’s more than that. The old name reminds him of a time when he was something different – softer, kinder. Naïve. All the things he is feeling now, looking down at the soft, rounded cheeks and wrinkled skin of his vessel, held safe and warm in this human woman’s arms. He’s hairless, mostly, tiny little wisps of dark colour like smoke streaked across his scalp.

All in all, he is tiny, defenceless, useless. Weak and pathetic. And yet, still… Lucifer loves him, with a fierce, unrelenting heat, his Grace reaching out to try and cocoon itself around the child almost without his approval. Sam stirs in his mother’s arms at the touch of it – icy cold and hateful as it is, he’s not surprised – and he pulls it away quickly, reluctance twisting in him even as he does. He wants to protect Sam, hold him close and cradle him as his mother is doing, make sure nothing can ever touch or hurt him.

It scares him, just a little.

“- _hold my hand, oh baby it’s a long way down, a long way down…_ ”

“Why’re you listening to that song?” he asks, abruptly, because if he doesn’t say something he is going to reach out and grab Sam from her and kill anyone who tries to come near them – and he can’t do that. He cannot interfere, not too much; killing a hundred-odd hospital staff is too much.

If Sam’s mother is confused by the abrupt turn in conversation, she doesn’t say anything. Perhaps she puts it down to nervousness, fear for the wife he doesn’t have who is supposedly in labour with a child that doesn’t exist. “I don’t know,” she says, shrugging one shoulder and looking over at the radio as the final notes of the song fade away into silence. “I just had it on as background noise. Samael, that’s an interesting-”

“Sammy!” The yell echoes down the ward, accompanied by the patter of small feet. Lucifer turns, catches a glimpse of a young boy with a shock of dark hair and slightly oversized clothes wobbling towards him before the kid is past him, shooting towards the bed and clinging to the rail. “Look, dada, Sammy!”

Sam’s family. Lucifer knows his brother is called Dean, has been keeping an eye on both the vessels – he should know what the opposition looks like, after all – but he has no idea what the father’s name is. Has already forgotten the mother’s name. His attention is focused again on his vessel, the slowly-waking baby blinking eyes open as his big brother’s grasping hands clutch at the blanket wrapped around him.

The father is not touching the child. The father is glaring at him.

“I- should probably go.” Lucifer nods, smiles smoothly at the father to sooth the man’s bruised alpha ego – he can see it, stirring in the back of the man’s eyes, the irritation and suspicion of another man in the same room as his wife. Possibly some kind of latent wariness of the signals Lucifer is giving off, some subconscious awareness that he is something not human. Less than hospital. “It was lovely to meet you and your son. Thank you.”

He leaves the hospital in silence, shaken – not entirely sure why he is leaving the building before taking off. He has known, in an abstract way, that he loves Sam, has loved him since he knew the name of the one who would one day be his true vessel. Why wouldn’t he? Sam is his, after all, the most precious gift his Father has ever given him, even if it was given grudgingly. The brightness of Sam’s soul was only another reason to love him, to admire how fearfully and wonderfully his vessel had been made.

But this? This is different.

This is not the love of possession, or the dissociated love of a master for his faithful servant. This is something sharper, stronger, a blow to his system, a sudden and unfathomable outpouring of chemicals at the direction of his vessel’s brain. He can name every single one of them, describe their composition and structure, but he has no concept of what they _mean_. Oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins, blurring together in a potent cocktail that causes a whole host of interesting responses in his vessel.

None of them are related to the love of possessing things.

He does not understand.

The cold bite of the wind as he leaves the building is a welcome respite, and the wings he spreads are buffeted by it, feathers ruffled and misaligned by its passing. He ignores it – his wings have had far worse – and, closing his eyes, launches himself into the slipstream of time again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Delta Rae's _Bottom of the River_.


	3. Chapter 3

This time, when he leaves the slipstream of time, it is not by choice.

His head is full, heavy with thoughts and confusion brought on by his experiences in the hospital, and he loses concentration – just for a second, but a second is all that is needed, time snapping back like elastic and flinging him from its path. He fights against it, fights to spread his wings wide and force his way back, but his concentration is broken once again and he fails.

This time, it is broken by a scream of grief from the soul of his vessel.

This time, he doesn’t try to fight his way back through time.

Wings tucked tight to his back, he dives, zig-zags his way across the surface of the Earth from where he was thrown – somewhere in India, maybe, he didn’t stop to check – to where his vessel is. The scream echoes inside of him like a blow, like a small, living thing trapped in his chest and fighting to claw its way out through his vessel’s ribs. No one must harm Sam. No one will be _allowed_ to harm Sam.

When he finally reaches where his vessel is (was), sees the smoking ruins of the house and the firemen milling around, the curious bystanders, the ozone-and-metal bone-deep tang of a life recently extinguished, he understands. Knows that the woman he saw only a few moments ago, the human so gentle and careful with his vessel in her arms, is dead.

Azazel, he realises, the name a curse inside his mind – not because he feels any particular grief over the mother’s death, she was only human, but because the echoes of Sam’s pain and fear still hang over the house. Too young to understand what was going on, too young to be able to ask, but souls do not have to be old to know when a loved one has been lost, and there is no doubt young Sam loved his mother with all his heart.

His vessel is no longer here, so he stays only long enough to cast his Grace across the house; there are a few firemen in the ruins, but Azazel and his taint have long since fled. The body of the mother remains, scattered atoms and fragments that survived the blaze, but her soul has already been collected – he does not recognise the reaper’s signature, but that is unsurprising. Even before his Fall, he was not familiar or friendly with many.

(Of all the creatures in Heaven, Earth, and Hell, there are only four creatures that discomfort him. Reapers – Death himself – are one of them.)

Satisfied that there are no loose ends left untied, or at least no more than is inevitable, no more than there must be, he leaves.

In the air, he casts out for his vessel, and finds the brightness of his soul – dimmed a little by sleep and a grief his vessel’s mind doesn’t understand or realise it should be feeling – a few miles away, travelling steadily in the opposite direction to the wreck of the house smouldering beneath him. It takes him only the most gentle twitch of the tips of his wings to take him over the car, gliding silent and invisible above the black roof of it as it purrs along the road.

The father sits in the driver’s seat, unsurprisingly, working the car – Lucifer isn’t entirely sure how they operate, not yet, but it seems to involve pedals and sticks and wheels, all very complicated, and it amazes him that the man is managing it when the pain rolling off of him is blinding, crashing waves of agony at the death of his wife.

For an archangel with a hundred millennia of rage and grief and hatred curled tight inside him, it’s nothing, almost laughable in its lack of intensity, but for most humans it would be crippling.

In the back seat, Sam and Dean are asleep, despite the radio playing low in the front, the throbbing beat of it apparently no barrier to their rest. He supposes, after all, that Sam is only a baby, lulled easily by the motion of the car and his tiredness, and Dean… well. Dean has been woken up in the middle of the night to save his baby brother’s life, watch his house burn to the ground, and discover his mother has died. All that takes its toll on a young child, after all – he knows from Nick’s memories that it is not only physical activity that can exhaust a body.

They’re holding hands. It’s rather sweet, he supposes, although it makes an instinctive wave of jealousy roll through his stomach; he and Michael were like that, once, soft and innocent and gentle. It hurts to see their vessels, so similar to them, so loving, so caring… But he cannot begrudge Sam this, cannot begrudge him the love of his brother, the way Dean has let him cling to his finger as they fall asleep, his head resting against the side of Sam’s baby seat.

Let Sam sleep while he is young, while he is innocent, while his brother’s hand is still enough to calm and comfort him. Let him take what happiness he can before the world rips it from him.

 “ _-cries, Oh Lord your work’s been done, now show me Heaven or kingdom come-_ ” The father sits alone in the front, hands curled tight and white-knuckled around the steering wheel, lips pressed thin and eyes glittering in the headlamps of passing cars. Lucifer realises that’s the tears, the glittering he’s seeing, unshed tears crowding at the corner and threatening to overflow.

(Later, when they’re somewhere safe – as safe as they can be – in a motel room, when Sam and Dean are asleep, he’s sure they will be. Sure the grief will pour out of John like blood, rip a hole in his chest that will never heal as it leaves him. Lucifer may not be human, but he knows what losing loved ones feels like, knows what grief feels like all too well.)

“ _-one hand on the trigger, and one hand on the cross; Jesus and his family are two things he’s lost-_ ”

The radio is turned off with the quick flick of a wrist, the roaring chords before the silence falls not quite hiding the choked, growling sob that escapes the father’s chest.

In the back seat, Sam’s soul cries out as the waves of pain and grief that radiate out from his father’s soul suddenly spike, and Lucifer grinds his vessel’s teeth. Tentatively – remembering Sam’s reaction to his touch in the hospital – he reaches out with his Grace, curls a soft, thin blanket of it around the baby’s soul, holds him tight and gentle. It’s not much, but it seems to help, shielding Sam from the worst of his father’s pain.

Curled up in his baby seat, pudgy fingers still curled loosely around one of Dean’s, Sam seems to relax a little; perhaps some small part of him recognises Lucifer, recognises what they will be to each other in the future. Perhaps they are already more alike than Lucifer had suspected.

It doesn’t really matter either way – he doesn’t care much for the reasoning behind it, is only grateful that his vessel does not try to escape from his touch this time.

Lucifer indulges himself with a small smile at the reaction, pulling away only when Sam’s small soul starts to shiver a little under the cold touch of his true form. He wishes he could make it otherwise, wishes he could be warm like a furnace, a hot water bottle, something to soothe Sam rather than freeze him, but he cannot change his nature.

He gave up his right to the warmth he once gloried in, the heat at the center of the stars, when he relinquished his role as the Morningstar, when he forfeited the title of Lightbringer – when he Fell.

That thought gets cast away, violently, as soon as it enters his mind; that is not something he wants to dwell on, ever. Instead, he turns his attention back to the situation at hand – Sam quieted, Dean still asleep, and the father…

The father is now weeping softly, silently, eyes fixed on the gold-painted glow of the headlights on the road ahead, tears running slowly down his cheeks. The grief rolling off him has softened, for the moment, a numbing, smothering blanket covering his soul. Lucifer can feel it, thick and sickly, suffocating him under its weight.

There is nothing he can do about the grief. Even if he could, he would not – he doesn’t care for human feelings, doesn’t care if a human is in pain. But, he can ensure his vessel remains unharmed, because the father is in no fit state to be driving. Even Lucifer, with his limited experience of automobiles, knows this.

He stays with the car for the next few miles or so, until they pull into a motel parking lot and the lights die and the rumbling noise that has been trailing behind the car stops, coasts overhead on the thermals and tracks the black roof moving against the asphalt, watches for any dangers. Thankfully, the car stays in the center of the road, does not waver or shudder, and the largest danger they face are small holes in the road that, after the car navigates one with little more than a slight dip, Lucifer deems not a danger at all.

After that, he stays long enough to see Dean exit the car with baby Sam in his arms, the child just stirring as he wakes from sleep (long enough to feel the burn of jealousy flare through his chest and up his throat) before soaring high, high above them with a single beat of his wings and slipping with gritted teeth into the malleability of time again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Shit, I forgot I was supposed to be updating this.~~ The song for this chapter is _The Preacher_ by Jamie N. Commons, which is so agonisingly John Winchester it's not even funny.


	4. Chapter 4

When Lucifer lands again, it’s out of sheer curiosity. No cries of distress from his vessel’s soul, no sharp flares of power or important landmarks in Sam’s life, just the steady fluctuations of Sam’s soul as he goes through his day-to-day life. But that’s what Lucifer’s curious about – there are many huge events in Sam’s life, many pivotal moments, many incidents of grief or rage or pain for him to choose from, but he doesn’t want them. Not right now, at least.

Right now, he just wants to see Sam.

He lands on a blazing hot summer’s day, in a motel car park; his return to four comforting dimensions of Earth is far easier this time, more controlled. No landing in India and crossing half the globe to find his vessel – Sam is here, somewhere, nearby.

Somewhere nearby, in this run-down complex of sprawling buildings with the paint peeling from their walls and doors, the scent of sex and decay and sin laden heavy in the air around them, rusting cars and well-worn trucks parked at random across the asphalt on which he stands. A part of him relishes it, relishes the decay and creeping mould of the spirit that covers it all. Most of him is just disgusted with it, with the way humanity infects everything it touches, with its corruption of his Father’s precious world.

Somewhere past the wall ringing the parking lot, there is a road. He can hear the cars roaring past on it, smell the acrid smoke of their exhausts, feel the steady pulse-beat of their engines. From out of an open door, a song echoes – “… _your love is a cold, cold place my dear, the seasons change, these ghosts appear…”_ A solitary bird calls from somewhere, and again, and then falls silent at the lack of response.

Lucifer ignores them all, ignores the thick-smoke souls of the ordinary people around him in their rooms and cars, and casts about instead for the silver-white glimmer of Sam’s amidst the smog, a precious pearl in the filth.

“ _…you will forget, but I will always remember, the time…_ ”

He silences the song with a thought, irritated at it for breaking his concentration, and returns to his search. It only takes a few seconds – his vessel behind the third door on his left, the one with red paint peeling from it and a plastic number seven affixed to its front with cheap glue. Lucifer can feel him, a warm, self-contained presence of light within the room. It takes him a moment to work out why that makes him feel so confused, so anxious.

Sam is alone.

He only came to check, to peer at Sam’s soul and satisfy his curiosity before leaving, but now… Sam is on his own, abandoned (no doubt temporarily, but even so) by his father and brother. Lucifer cannot leave now, with his curiosity piqued like this, no matter that he should, no matter that directly contacting his vessel will be pushing the malleability of time.

With the slightest twitch of his wings, he dips out of the world and back into it again, realigning reality around himself so that the is now inside the motel room containing his true vessel – there are wards dabbed on the walls, salt lining the entrances, charms and the like draped around, but none of them bother him. Few hunters bother to ward against angels; few hunters believe in them, or even _know_ there are wards. John Winchester is not one of the few.

His vessel, naturally, is a little alarmed at his entrance. Lucifer feels a flicker of regret when he sees the fallen plastic army men at Sam’s feet where the child had leapt up at his arrival – no doubt they were arranged in neat lines, careful formations that only an eight-year-old’s mind could conceive of. Now, they are a scattered mess of fallen bodies, and Sam is in danger of treading on one of them if he lunges for the duffel containing the guns as he looks like he wants to.

“I am not here to hurt you,” blurts Lucifer, trying hard not to stare, because his vessel looks so different now – taller, more teeth, more hair, wide brown eyes that are staring at him with soft distrust, some of the baby fat slimmed off of him and adult proportions just beginning to shape his frame. His physicality is so different from the squalling child he beheld just recently, curled in his mother’s or brother’s arms, but his soul is the same, wide and bright and welcoming.

“You got past the stuff,” says Sam, glancing at the unbroken salt lines across the doors, at the smears on the walls showing the wards are still intact. “How did you get in? What kind of monster are you?”  
The words cut sharply into Lucifer’s Grace and he swallows back against the flood of human emotions rolling through his vessel at them. Instead, he raises his hands in a universal gesture of good will, and shakes his head. “I am not a monster. I came here to help you.”

Sam stares at him for a long moment, considering, and then seems to decide that if Lucifer wished him harm he would have done it already – although Lucifer sees him slip a hand into his pocket, curl around the rectangular outline of something there, and Lucifer wonders at the kind of family that leaves eight year olds alone with knives for protection. “Get out,” he says simply, scuffing at the floor with one toe before slumping down into a cross-legged sitting position, not quite in full control of his own limbs. “I don’t want you in here, and dad’s gonna be back soon. He’ll be angry with you, he won’t care if you’re not a monster. He’ll hunt you.”

Lucifer does not leave. Sam ignores him studiously, continues sorting through his army men, doesn’t look up.

“Where is your father?” Lucifer asks, eventually, and Sam shrugs moodily.  
“Dunno.” He stands one of the army men up, flicks its head and watches as it falls to the floor again, on top of another of its fallen comrades. “Out somewhere. Talking to people or something.” A moment later, much quieter, “Drinking.”  
“Dean?” asks Lucifer, because he knows that if his vessel’s father is anything like Lucifer’s, then he is an absent parent at best, a neglectful one at worst – but Dean, if Dean is anything like Michael in his earlier years, should be here, fretting over Sam and loving him and caring for him. Not absent.

Sam shrugs again, but this time it’s less moody, more anxious. “He went out to get food. ‘Cos dad forgot to buy any yesterday, even though he said he would-” He cuts himself off. “Dean said there was a gas station a mile down the road he could get stuff from, said he’d go and get some, but dad’s gonna be p-” Again, he catches himself, corrects himself, although when he does there’s a slightly petulant tone to his voice – a childish, _dad can swear so why can’t I_. “Dad’s gonna be real angry if he gets back and I’m on my own. Dean’s supposed to look after me. Even though I can look after myself!” he adds, defensively, hunching his shoulders as if daring Lucifer to suggest otherwise.

“I have no doubt of that,” he says easily, no judgement or condescension in his voice. If Sam could not look after himself, if his vessel was not strong beyond belief in mind or spirit, he would not still be alive. “You are very strong, Sam.”

His vessel makes a low, disbelieving noise at the back of his throat,  toying with the plastic soldiers in a half-hearted, vicious sort of way, picking one up and dropping it to watch it bounce across the wooden floor. Sam does not believe him.

“Sam,” Lucifer says quietly, crouching to cup the child’s face in his palms. He feels Sam recoil a little, both alarm and an instinctual reaction to the coldness of his Grace that bleeds through into his vessel, making his palms carved of melting ice, and then his vessel is still – feeling the connection between them, perhaps, although Lucifer suspects that is empty hope rather than solid reasoning. “Listen to me. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, a marvellous work. Believe me when I say, you are strong.”

Sam looks up at him with wide eyes, hands falling slack around his toy soldiers. “Fearfully and wonderfully…” he mumbles to himself, blinking. “What does that mean?”  
“It means,” says Lucifer, quietly, “that you are a very precious thing.”

For a long moment, Sam considers this, eyes on the floor and each hand curled around a toy soldier, banging their plastic bases absently against the floor. “Yeah,” he mumbles eventually, unsure, a little nervous. “Okay.” He looks up, smiles a little at Lucifer, and his soul glows a fraction brighter. “Okay.”

Glad he understands, Lucifer nods, and rises. “Good.” His voice is benevolent, pleased, and something warm curls in his Grace at the sight of his vessel

He closes his eyes, searches out the Impala – easy, smeared over as it is with silver streaks of Sam’s soul, dirty with the memories of the three people it plays home to – and then opens them again. “Your father will be here soon,” he informs Sam, quietly, looking down at his vessel. The soldiers are being re-arranged, lined up in the same careful formation as before, with a single-minded focus that makes Lucifer think Sam is either thinking very hard about what he has just been told, or is a little scared by it. “I need to go before he does.”

“Because he’ll hunt you?” There’s a slightly sharp edge to Sam’s voice, almost suspicious, as if just because he’s accepted for the time being that Lucifer isn’t here to kill him doesn’t mean he doesn’t think Lucifer’s a monster of some kind. It hurts, for his true vessel to be so distrustful of him – they are meant to be, made for each other, two halves of a whole. One half should not fear the other.

Instead of saying any of that, though, he sighs; yet another human foible that seems to be coming to him far too easily now. Wearing flesh has an almost terrifying effect on his Grace, of… humanising it, as if some of Nick is bleeding through into him.

He’s not sure if it’s because his vessel is imperfect, or if that’s just how taking a vessel works.

“No, Sam,” he says patiently. “Because I’m not for him. I’m just for you.”  
 _That_ gets Sam’s attention. He looks up, sharply, eyes narrowed, a curious edge of desperation to his voice as he asks, “Like a guardian angel?”  
“…So- something like that,” manages Lucifer, and he hates the way his voice cracks around the word, hates the agonising, grief-filled twist in his Grace at those words, at what could have been.  
“So… you hear me pray?” There’s hope in Sam’s voice now, such painful hope that when he asks, “So God’s real?” that Lucifer doesn’t have the heart to disillusion him.

“God… is real, yes,” he murmurs, swallowing past the tight lump of hatred-loss-love-pain that curls suddenly around his vessel’s throat (human bodies’ involuntary reactions to emotions, chemicals and hormones and physical changes, are most irritating). “And yes, Sam. I hear you when you pray. Every single time.”

No doubt Heaven hated that, hated the Devil being able to hear Sam’s prayers, but he could – they couldn’t deny him them, not when the child was his true vessel, as much as they might have wanted to. So he had heard every one of Sam’s prayers – _please let us not move again because I really really like this school, please let Santa bring me a puppy for Christmas, please make daddy not drink so much, please make Dean more happy, please let Dean and Dad get back okay from this hunt, please let me go on the next hunt, please let me get out of this family, please look after Jess why did you take her from me why_ – locked down there in the Cage, alone in the dark, Sam’s intermittently whispered words echoing around him, unable to do anything to grant any of those wishes he so wanted to.

An exquisite form of torture. He’s sure his Father was delighted when He thought that one up.

“Oh.” Sam’s eyes widen, and then his face falls a little, crumpling, and a complex string of emotions run over his face, emotions Lucifer can’t quite discern but can feel in the fluctuating light of Sam’s soul. “ _Oh_.”

And then he’s on his feet, stumbling forward, and throwing his arms around Lucifer’s waist.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he whispers, face pressed against the comfortable softness of Nick’s stomach, arms squeezing so tightly it would be a little difficult to breathe, if he were human. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”  
Lucifer has no idea what to do. He stands there, arms raised a little, hesitantly curved in a way that could possibly be suggesting reciprocating, staring down at Sam with something like alarm on his face. Eventually, he settles for wrapping one arm around Sam’s shoulders and settling a hand in the child’s hair – already slightly shaggy, overlong, likely approaching something that could be called a mane by the end of the month. “I told you,” he says softly, tongue swiping out to touch nervously at his lips. “You are a very precious thing to me.”

He suspects Sam would have stood for a long time in the embrace – that _he_ would have stood for a long time, drinking in the waves of _safe_ and _warm_ and _love_ rolling off of Sam’s soul – but there’s the noise of an engine outside, tyres on the hot tarmac, and Lucifer reluctantly pulls away.

“I have to go,” he says, smiling gently at Sam, and then shaking his head when Sam opens his mouth to argue. “No. I must go. But… but I will see you again, I promise. I will find you again.”  
“Okay,” says Sam, nodding, and although there’s a defeated slump to his shoulders, there’s a new fire and determination in his soul. “I’ll- I’ll keep praying to you, I promise. I’ll pray to you every night.”

Lucifer’s surprised by the fierceness in his voice, the urgency of it, as if this is something Sam sees as vital. As if Lucifer’s care is to be bought by prayer. But he nods anyways, smiles. “Thank you. I will… look forward to hearing them.” He’s not sure if it’s the right thing to say, but if it isn’t, Sam doesn’t seem bothered by it.

With their farewells done, he rolls his shoulders and tilts his head back a little, searching for the thread of time to tap into to carry him on his journey. It takes little effort to find it, in tune as his Grace is with the passage of it, and he clings tight to it as he spreads his wings – hears Sam gasp at the ragged, shadowy projections of them that appear on the wall of the motel room behind him, and smiles – from their hiding place inside his current vessel.

He launches himself into the air, up and out and _through_ , into the passage of time itself, just as the door handle of the motel room turns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is _The Summer of John Wayne_ by Tom McRae. The lyrics don't fit perfectly, I know, but the feel of the song is kind of perfect for this chapter. Also, this was one of my favourite chapters to write, so hopefully you all like it too!


	5. Chapter 5

His vessel’s rage is a tangible thing, so bright and hot it feels like his soul is aflame with it. The rage in Sam’s heart is unlike anything Lucifer’s ever felt from his vessel before, stronger than anything he’s felt from most of the humans he’s come across.

It reminds him a little of himself, back in the day, when his anger was a righteous supernova and not a smouldering, infected blackness weighing on his chest.

Curious despite himself, he hovers, buffeted by the currents of time as they try to hurry him along or push him out. He ignores them, spreading his wings wide and beating them lazily, soft little motions that keep him relatively still in time’s stream. Beyond, out in the part of the universe where time is only one dimension and not two, his vessel’s soul is white-hot, but dulled, no longer with its usual glittering edge to it. Not just anger, then – anger and grief, a betrayal. Probably from someone close to him.

The circumstances are a little too close to what he once remembers his own being, long ago, in a time and a place he no longer likes to think of but dwells on regularly.

Despite the feeling – and how he hates them, these _feelings_ , these little remnants of Nick’s humanity that keep sneaking past his barriers and into his Grace, chemicals that should not affect his true form but do – that he is making a mistake, his vessel’s distress is strong, a siren call to him. He soars effortlessly out of time, banking and wheeling on the temporal equivalent of thermals without even needing to beat his wings, before tumbling out of the stream and down to Earth.

When he lands, a way back from the lit window of a motel room, the rain driving down from the water-swollen clouds hanging low over his head, he is struck by two things.

The first is, that the humans are arguing. Again. All humans ever seem to do is argue. He’s not stopped off since he last saw Sam, a young, rounded child looking awkwardly too-big for his own skin, but he’s kept his eye on Sam as he’s travelled and he’s felt the spikes of irritation, the waves of anger, the crackles of distaste – they’re near-constant, increasing in frequency the closer towards the present he’s taken himself. It’s difficult to tell what they’re triggered by, but the consistency of them, wherever Sam moves or gets dragged, suggests the irritation is with either his father, or Dean. Possibly both. Possibly just life in general; Lucifer really can’t fault humans for being grumpy when they have a ridiculous number of _things_ floating around inside them and arbitrarily changing their physiology or psychology or blood chemistry for no good reason.

The second is that his vessel has grown in his absence. Sam is no longer awkwardly pre-prepubescent, somehow rounded and lanky at the same time, no longer soft with puppy-fat or rosy-skinned. Instead of the easy, ridiculous proportions of just minutes ago, for Lucifer, he’s tall and solid and imposing, a dark blot of muscle and skin and hair in the window’s yellowed light.

Compared the soft heaviness of Nick – his body comfortably middle-age, the not-quite-right fit of it jarring - Sam’s aggressive youthfulness, the perfect compatibility of is maturing soul shining through... it’s surprisingly appealing, in a way Lucifer doesn’t quite understand, in a bright rush of _want want want_ that has nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with the fact it’s _Sam_.

The sensation is confusing. Lucifer doesn’t understand it, doesn’t _like_ it. Should really be above it.

As he watches, the argument intensifies – Sam throws his hands in the air, gestures angrily at their father, turns his back on Dean as his brother’s body language screams reconciliation and peace. Lucifer still has no idea what they’re arguing about, until the father waves a piece of paper in the air, thick and parchment-like with neat typeface on it that he can’t quite read, but doesn’t need to. He knows what’s on it – heard Sam’s prayers of thanks, of frustration, of fear, all through the process of applying for a place at a college. Lucifer can’t remember the name of it, doesn’t much care, but he remembers this argument, if only for the frantic, desperate, heartbroken prayers Sam prayed after it.

There’s a flurry of movement through the window; Sam starts forward, teeth bared in anger, mouth open in a shout, and then stumbles back when his father presses forward too, willing to fight but still afraid, still not quite over the ingrained respect a parent demands. Lucifer knows the feeling.

Dean slots himself neatly between his brother and father, and there’s fear in every tense-muscled line of his body, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. His hand gestures are gentle, placating – sharp when his father tries to push closer, tries to muscle past to get to Sam – and he slowly but determinedly ushers Sam out of the motel room, before following after.

The door shuts with a snap that Lucifer can hear, now they’re outside, and then just their father is left, slump-shouldered and tired-looking in the yellow light of the motel room bulb.

Sam and Dean hurry through the rain, backs rounded and hands over their heads, but they’re still soaked when they reach the Impala. Obviously, Dean is taking Sam somewhere – Dean is kicking him out. Lucifer feels a tight swoop of familiarity somewhere in the center of his true form, the whole situation ringing sour and reeking of déjà vu. But he stays where he is, watches as Dean slides into the driver’s seat and Sam rides shotgun, listens as the motor roars into life and the rain sloshes beneath the car’s tyres as it pulls out of the parking lot and onto the road.

With a sigh, Lucifer spreads his aching wings (time travel is not good for them, not good for _him_ , but this is important) and launches himself skyward, hovering several meters above the car and casting his Grace out to listen in.

Dean fumbles with the music controls, turns the music on to cover the silence. There’s a hissing crackle while he tunes it, before the music starts. “ _I don’t wanna be a proud man, just wanna be a man... A little less like my father-”_ It cuts off abruptly, Dean hitting the volume button with unnecessary force, and when Sam looks up, Dean’s staring resolutely out the windscreen with a black look on his face.

They drive in silence for a long while after that, Lucifer floating easily above them – gliding, really, considering he’s not actually expending any energy doing so. The material world is so easy to move through, especially compared to Heaven or Hell or the Cage.

Compared to the Cage, even time is easy to travel through.

“Come with me,” says Sam, out of the blue, breaking the simmering tension that’s been gathering in the car like smoke, thick and choking. “Come with me. Come to Stanford, you can stay in my room or something, you can get a job, we can-”  
“Come with you?” repeats Dean, and the hopeful edge that had been building in Sam’s throat dies. “Sam, I’m a high school drop-out with a GED and no money or references. Who the hell do you think is gonna hire me?”

That makes Sam stop, stutter. “You- you could go to college or something, or- or catch up on whatever you missed in high-”  
“Sam, my high school records are kinda damning.” There’s no mockery in Dean’s voice now, no belittling or amusement, just the flat resignation of someone who knows he’s never going to get anywhere and has given up trying. “I’ve got social issues, behavioural issues, questions about my intelligence, questions about my attitude, complaints from probably over half the teachers I ever had… who the hell’s gonna take me? ‘Cause hey, looking at my record, I sure wouldn’t let me within fifty miles of an education.”

There’s surprising bitterness in his voice, a long-nursed grudge and disappointment, but either Sam doesn’t notice or doesn’t know how to respond. “Come with me,” he repeats instead, words simple and voice even. It’s not quite a plea, more needy than an invitation, almost edging towards a demand.

Dean sighs, and then the rain-lashed ticket house of the station is coming into view and he’s pulling the car to a stop next to the curb, killing the engine. In the silence, the rain drumming on the windows is loud and angry, a too-fast heartbeat that almost mirror’s Sam’s.

For a second, just a second, Lucifer thinks Dean’s going to say yes. And then…

“I guess this is where we go our separate ways,” says Dean, quietly, reluctantly, and Sam thought Dean was going to say yes – he can read it in the dimming of his vessel’s soul, in the lines of misery around his eyes and mouth. “I’m gonna miss you, Sammy.”

As viciously victorious as Lucifer is, as vindicated as he feels that Sam’s brother has abandoned him too, that Michael’s vessel is just as callous and heartless as the archangel himself – just as unable to see the flaws of his Father, just as unwilling to even attempt thinking for himself – he still aches for the look of pain on Sam’s face.

Sam swallows hard, masking his hurt surprisingly well, although Lucifer has no doubt that Dean can see underneath it to the wounds just as well as he can. “Yeah,” he says, roughly, voice hoarse. It’s a mark of how important the occasion is that he doesn’t argue the use of ‘Sammy’. “Gonna miss you to. Stay safe, ok?”

“Sure,” lies Dean, because they both know hunting’s anything but safe, and they both know there’s no way in hell Dean’s gonna stop that just because Sammy’s gone. “You… I dunno, work hard and get your lawyer degree and find your white picket fence and two-point-children and all that shit. You hear me?”

“Yeah. I hear you.” And then Sam’s slapping at his seatbelt, leaning over to grab Dean and pull him into a tight hug – the last one they’ll get in a long time, _maybe in forever_ , Lucifer can hear rolling around in Sam’s head. He presses his face tight against Dean’s neck, breathes in the scent and warmth of a brother he’s going to miss like an ache in his chest, and Lucifer-

Lucifer turns and runs.

He’s not proud of it, but it’s what he does. He can’t handle it, can’t face it, this powerful, gentle tenderness between two people who have betrayed each other – two people who should, by all rights, hate the other for leaving. And yet they don’t, they still love each other, fiercely and protectively and with all the heat of the shared blood pumping through their veins. Why? _Why_?

There was no such love for him when he Fell. No such final embrace, no such sad tenderness, just the ice-cold of his brother’s blade against his throat, the ice-cold look in Michael’s eyes, the ice-cold of the air rushing past him as he threw himself backward off Heaven and down, down through clouds and howling winds and then down through the Earth itself when his Father opened it beneath him, sending him plummeting to his Cage.

He gets ice and rage and loathing, and Sam gets tenderness, warmth, reluctant acceptance. It makes him angry, furious – because as much as he loves his vessel, as much as he wants nothing but the best for Sam… But they are so alike, so similar. He doesn’t understand why his vessel gets Dean, a brother who follows their father but loves his wayward brother still, and Lucifer got a brother who tried to put a blade through his throat.

(Actually, he does – his Father is not fair. His Father is cruel and whimsical and arbitrary, and does not care. But he doesn’t want to think on that now, doesn’t want to think on the thousand tiny and cutting injustices his Father has thrown at him, on the hundred weights and accusations He has placed on his shoulders.)

He launches himself into the air with a snarl, powerful wings beating hard and carrying him up, towards the stars – towards where he truly feels at home. He sits there amongst them, for a while, curled at the heart of the sun with his wings twisted tight around him like a comfort blanket, ignoring the sight of Sam’s brilliantly silver soul parting from the steady bronze of Michael’s vessel somewhere millions of miles away from him.

Eventually, he does rouse himself, sick of his own moping and self-indulgence. He has a job to do, information to collect; he still has not found any sign of what may have stolen Sam from him in the future, still has not seen any hint of something with that kind of power or knowledge. Reluctantly, he uncurls himself and stands straight, turning himself to the future and pressing against time’s membrane until it breaks and reforms around him, grudgingly accepting his presence and sweeping him onward.

He doesn’t so much as glance back at the sun. It will still be there when he lands, whatever time he lands in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter is "David" by Noah Gundersen. Also, as you may or may not have guessed already, parallels between Michael/Lucifer's relationship and Sam/Dean's is my favourite thing - specifically, the differences between Michael and Dean, and how much Lucifer hates/is confused by that.


	6. Chapter 6

He doesn’t mean to land again. He has seen enough of Sam’s soul, enough of the objects and the people around him, to have a good idea of where to begin searching for him – how to begin contacting him, at the very least. This indulgence of his new power and freedom has gone far enough, and now he has to return. He has army to raise, a vessel to seek out, and an apocalypse to start, which is really more than enough to be getting on with for now.

His plans are ruined by the echoes of grief that, for the second time in his short life, roll out from his vessel’s soul, disrupting his flight. He isn’t thrown out into the material world, this time, has more control over his wings after having had a reasonable chance to flex and exercise them for the first time in millennia, but it is still enough to make him waver, enough to make him flare his wings out as a block to stall his progress.

He shouldn’t go to investigate. He really shouldn’t. Although he is, at heart, a curious being, this is not something important. His vessel is alive, in the future, and functioning to a greater or lesser degree – functioning enough to be capable of speaking the words necessary to consent, to let Lucifer in. That Sam can act as a vessel is the only important thing. He should not be wasting more energy and burning through his current vessel simply to dip in and out of his future vessel’s life.

But Sam’s cries arrest him, force him to a stop and keep him there. No matter how much he wishes to progress, to return to the present, his vessel’s grief is like a physical anchor. The connection between a vessel and their archangel, even without consent to bind them closer, is not to be underestimated – and Lucifer has spent his whole existence waiting for this one person, this one vessel. Their bond is stronger than most.

With a hiss of frustration, he angles himself towards Sam, tucks his wings tight against his back, and dives into the physical world. He lands on a street, somewhere that looks as if it is probably in America, typical and quiet and relatively affluent.

The house opposite him, on the other side of the street, is on fire.

There’s the smell of sulphur in the air, flames licking out of one of the windows on the upper floor, and his vessel’s soul is _screaming_... Lucifer’s Grace twists itself in knots, somewhere between anxious and sympathetic and concerned for the pain in Sam’s soul, making hair-fine cracks in the smooth-white surface of it like it’s about to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The human chemicals are pumping again, rushing emotions through him, and he’s getting worse and worse at constructing barriers against them, at keeping the hormones at bay – like Nick’s managing to seep into him, piece by piece, Grace merging with cells in a scarily inescapable way.

Lucifer’s Grace twists because they’ve been here before, done this before. He’s seen his vessel’s soul scream like this, seen Sam in this kind of pain before, and knows what it means – death.

It’s only a second later that he realises, over the distant wail of sirens (something to put out the fire, he assumes, something to try and heal the wounded) and the muttering of the people gathering slowly around him to watch the macabre spectacle, that he can hear his vessel’s _actual_ screams, a raw shout of, “ _Jess!_ ” from somewhere in the depths of the building, and Lucifer’s heart leaps in his vessel’s chest without is permission because Sam is still in there, _Sam is still in there-_

Moments later, though, Sam appears in the doorway, kicking and shouting, thrashing against the grip his brother has him in – and Lucifer can’t keep the surprise off his face, because that’s Sam’s _brother_. That’s Dean, who abandoned him, who is Michael’s vessel; the loyal one, the one with convictions, the one who doesn’t care about his baby brother. Why has Dean come back for Sam?

(Why didn’t Michael come back for him?)

Sam’s soul still feels fragile, on the verge of shattering, grief and aching pain radiating out from it like a sun, the usual brilliance of it dulled and hazy like the smoke now pouring from the roof of the house. The sirens are closer, now, and there are more people, their talking louder.

Some of them are passers-by, with no idea what is going on, but many of them have a common name on their lips – Jess, the name Sam had shouted. The name of a woman who is still, apparently, in the house. Lucifer remembers the name, from the hundreds, thousands of prayers about her Sam had whispered and sobbed over the years. He’d loved her, genuinely and honestly, in the innocence of first love.

Something hot and strangling and vicious rises up in Lucifer’s throat at the thought of her, but he tempers it, pushes it down. She is – he casts his Grace out through the building, through the heat and flames and memories burning down – dead now, a mere ghost in Sam’s life as of this moment.

The thought doesn’t stop the jealousy, which is what he realises he’s feeling with a tight curl of disgust at the _humanity_ of it. He is jealous of a dead creature, a _human_ at that, because his vessel loved her. Loves her. It’s ridiculous, beyond ridiculous, but the flesh of his body is only encouraging him.

The speed with which its taint has spread alarms him. It’s something he’ll have to deal with, soon, a problem he’ll have to fix. He will not, _cannot_ , be compromised like this.

He is even more disgusted with his jealousy when he reaches out to touch Sam’s soul, brush over its broken surface, and feels the stomach-twisting agony of his vessel, as if Sam’s chest has been cracked down the middle and invisible blood is pouring out. His vessel is in pain, and he is begrudging the human for doing what humans are built to do – loving, and then destroying what they love.

“- _I came and I was nothing, and time will give us nothing, so why did you choose to lean on a man you knew was falling...”_

Above him, someone throws open and window and sticks their head out, presumably to gawp at the crowds below, at the fire engines – now arrived – dousing  the blackened and smoking ruins in water to put out the smouldering. Music drifts out, loud and forgotten in the face of the drama occurring outside. Soon, they will go inside, find the body, report the death. Lucifer doesn’t need to wait for their report, and nor do the Winchesters, to know she is already gone.

Sam and Dean do not seem as if they are waiting around for the report. His vessel is perched on the Impala’s hood, Dean’s careful, gentle hands checking his brother’s face and head over for damage, for cuts and bruises on the fragile human skin. Either he finds nothing, or he is satisfied that what he finds is not an immediate threat to Sam’s health, because he releases his brother’s face after a few seconds and opens his mouth.

This is it, thinks Lucifer. This is the moment when Dean will reprimand Sam for daring to love, when Dean will anger Sam to the point that Sam will walk away from him and Dean will push his brother out of his life forever. This, this is the moment where the Michael in Dean’s soul will shine through and Lucifer will finally be able to quash this sharp, unspecified longing in his chest, the longing that screams _why does Dean love Sam when Michael doesn’t love me_.

Except Dean… doesn’t walk away. He smiles at Sam, sad and lost and lonely, a look echoed a thousand times darker on Sam’s face – the soft lines around his eyes are hard, the smiling edge to his mouth gone flat.

Lucifer doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the brittle quality to his vessel, now, the cracks in his soul reflected in the cracks in his composure. Doesn’t like the fact that Dean is staying – even if he is the only thing holding his vessel together right now, duct tape on Sam’s broken soul.

He stays just long enough to watch the pair of them enter the car, watch them drive away through the darkening streets, past the crowds of staring people, ignoring the calls of the fire brigade and the ambulance personnel behind them. He watches as they disappear into the darkness, their car melting into the shadows and leaving the smoking ruins of the house behind.

After they are gone, he leaves, a single beat of his wings carrying him high above the Earth, and another propelling him forwards in time again, the barrier easier and easier to break now he remembers how to, now his wings are stretched and exercised for the first time since his Fall.

Maybe some people in the crowd see him leave, wonder where the silent man went. Wonder if he, like the people in the car, has run away. Maybe even wonder if he is to blame for the fire. He doesn’t much care.

Let the humans think what they want. They’re unimportant. Sam is all that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's song is "The Enemy" by Mumford & Sons. It's usually my destiel song, but it worked so well here I couldn't pass the opportunity up.
> 
> In other news, I'm off to Thailand for two weeks for hospital work experience, and I'm about 99% sure I'm not going to have any internet connection with me, so I probably won't be updating for the next two weeks - which is why you got this chapter only five-odd days after the last one. Sorry about that, but the next chapter is a good one, so it's worth the wait. :)


	7. Chapter 7

The next time he lands has nothing to do with Sam, and everything to do with himself. He is becoming too human, too… soft and vulnerable. Too much of a slave to the chemicals and desires and movements of his vessel. He has forgotten who he is, _what_ he is – an archangel, resplendent in his Fallen glory, powerful and cruel and distant. Not a human who fusses and worries and mothers over another, broken human, even one who is his true vessel.

He is both forgetting his archangelic status, and becoming too close to his vessel. Yes, he must care for Sam, but as a farmer tends to an animal; not because they care for it, but because of what they will give them in return for the care. There is a respect, for the animal’s sacrifice, for the use it is being put to but in the end… it is still only an animal.

Sam may be his vessel, and he may respect Sam for the service Sam will eventually do him in offering up his body as a vessel, but in the end Sam is simply human, albeit one perfectly made for him. He is more special than Nick, because he is Lucifer’s, solely and specifically Lucifer’s, but in the end he is still only an animal, a tool. A _human_.

Lucifer needs to remind himself that humanity is still something contemptible, a race to be hated and despised and pitied. And he knows just how to do it.

When he walks inside the bar he’s landed in front of, his senses are assaulted – cigarette smoke, stale beer, sweat, dull lights, flashing TV, people, talking, laughter… The sights and sounds and smells are enough to make him reel a little on the threshold, swaying as if already drunk. How humans cope with this level of intensity, this level of stimulation, all the time, he doesn’t know. Perhaps they simply just don’t feel everything they could, or don’t care, in which case they are even more repulsive for wasting the gifts his Father has wrongfully given them.

After a moment, though, he steadies himself, makes it through the door and into the smoky room, heading to the bar and settling into a sticky, faux-leather seat. The barman says something to him that he doesn’t quite catch, between the jukebox music blaring, “ _Don't call it doubt or call it faith, still breathing on this tired plain, hope is all our curse and cruel companion,_ _”_ and his lack of concentration, but his casual gesture towards one of the bottles lining the back of the bar seems to be answer enough.

He’s still scanning the room, searching, when a glass of something dark and amber is pushed in front of him, the bartender looking at him expectantly.

Lucifer gestures to him, applies a little Grace, and the bartender turns away with a satisfied sort of smile, apparently happy to let Lucifer have the alcohol for free. He toys with the glass absently, pushing it back and forth across the wood, dipping a finger into it and licking the clinging droplets off – the taste is strong and sharp, makes his vessel want to cough – tapping nails against its side, all the while watching.

He finds his prey within minutes; a loud, red-faced man, very obviously drunk. Lucifer’s not sure why he picked that particular man out – maybe because of the creeping black rot crawling over his soul, maybe because of his predilection of petty cruelty towards animals, maybe because his overly-loud voice is grating on Lucifer’s ears. Maybe, simply, because he doesn’t like the look of him. He doesn’t need to justify himself. The man is a human. That in itself is justification for his death.

“Hey,” says a voice, low and hazy from his left, slurred with alcohol. “You gonna drink that?” A hand floats into his side of line of vision, gesturing towards the glass of amber liquid that is sitting full and glimmering in front of him. Lucifer scowls a little at the interruption, turns to politely warn the man off interfering in his business – if he doesn’t, then maybe Lucifer needs to change his target – only to freeze.

It’s his vessel. Sam Winchester has found him, in some grimy bar in the middle of nowhere, USA. How has Sam found him? And, more importantly, how did he not recognise his vessel before? How did he not feel the broken-sun glow of that white, shining sun until he was looking right at him?

Those questions will have to wait for later. For now, Sam’s hand on his arm, Sam’s eyes peering intently at him are more important. His vessel’s grown, even since Lucifer last saw him, filled out and bulked up. He’s broad-shouldered and muscular, hair fast approaching mane-like, eyes dark and serious despite the amount of empty bottles sitting in front of him. Lucifer is transfixed.

Sam sighs, blowing hair out of his eyes. “Hey, man,” he says, and there’s something like aggression in his voice – he’s angling for a fight, then, for one reason or another, and Lucifer can empathise with that. The restless, directionless anger that stirs at the bottom of the soul and makes the kill-or-be-killed adrenaline of mindless violence seem very appealing. “I said, you drinking that?”

He refuses to indulge Sam’s urge to lash out, though. “Yes,” he says simply, picking up the glass and bringing it to his lips, downing the contents in one long swallow. It burns at his throat, the taste foreign and not particularly pleasant, and he coughs at the burn of it down his throat, eyes watering. Sam looks like he’s containing a drunken giggle – not terribly successfully – at the sight, and it makes something akin to irritation bloom in Lucifer’s stomach. He doesn’t like being mocked.

For a long moment, there’s silence; Sam struggling not to laugh, Lucifer struggling to hold back the watering of his eyes. Then Sam sighs heavily, disappointed at his inability to incite a fight, and stumbles to his feet.

Lucifer tries to stay still and concentrate on his prey again. He really does. But Sam is bright and beautiful and an irresistible lure that he can’t help following. Like a moth to flame, he rises to follow Sam, trailing through the clouds of smoke and the noisy, drunken patrons, drawn by the siren-song of Sam’s brilliant soul.

He finds Sam in the toilets, pants around his ankles, stood close to a urinal and using one hand to brace himself against the wall in an attempt to stop from falling over. He makes a sorry sight, drunk and loose-limbed and hazy-eyed, hunched over in a filthy bathroom, but somehow he still shines.

“No, no, no,” mutters Sam, when he notices Lucifer, shaking his head as he pisses in a slow and shaky stream into the urinal, hazy eyes focused on Lucifer. “No, I’m not- you’ve got the wrong-” He pauses, does himself up with some difficulty, and then looks at Lucifer again. “Ah, fuck it.”

The next moment, there’s a hand around Lucifer’s wrist, the grip bruise-tight if he were human, tugging him out of the toilets and down some back corridor, away from the door back to the bar and down to a grimy fire escape. Sam opens it through a combination of forcing the rusted bar down and kicking at the door, the hinges screeching in protest before finally acquiescing and releasing them into the dubiously-fresh air of an alley behind the bar.

It’s not exactly the kind of environment Lucifer would usually choose to put himself in; there’s a pile of garbage bags several meters to his left, puddles and rubbish and dirt scattered across the uneven floor. The whole place is filthy, but Sam brought him here, so he will stay until he knows what Sam wants.

He finds out a few moments later, when Sam slurs, “C’mon, then, let’s get on with it,” and grabs his shoulder, pushing him up against the wall. He feels a hand pressed against his hip, his stomach, and then down, fumbling with his pants near his crotch. Then there’s cold air against his skin, and he sucks in a hissing breath of protest before Sam wraps a warm hand around him, easing off on the sting of it.

“What the hell, man,” mumbles Sam, half-leaning against Lucifer, breath thick with alcohol and hot against his cheek. “You’re not even hard. Fucking _weird_.”  
For a few moments, Lucifer is confused by Sam’s words – they seem to make sense to Nick, but in a vague sort of way that means he can’t pick a meaning from it – and then Sam’s hand starts moving, a slow drag against soft, dry flesh.

He gasps, tilts his head back and presses forward into Sam’s hand, and… and something _happens_ to his body. Chemicals flood his bloodstream, his heart rate picks up, heat coils tight and deep in his belly, and the length of flesh in Sam’s hand does harden, stiff and warm despite Lucifer’s coldness. It’s new and strange and a little terrifying, but it feels _good_ , Sam touching him like this, Sam touching him intimately and breathing heavy into his ear.

“Good,” grunts Sam, satisfied, and then pulls his hand away. Lucifer pauses for a second, confused – has he done something wrong? Is this _it_? He may not be perfectly versed in human sex, but he’s aware that an orgasm is supposed to occur, and he’s not felt anything approaching that – but Sam is just undoing his own pants, pushing them down a little and pulling his cock out, stroking it with slow, needy gasps. “I’m not fucking blowing you, ‘kay?” he says, and all Lucifer can do is nod, wait for Sam to tell him what to do next.

The noise that’s punched out of his face when Sam lines them up and wraps a hand around both of them, fingers tight and hot against sensitive skin, isn’t human or angelic, it’s animal, raw and brutal and desperate. He thrusts into Sam’s hand on instinct, grabbing at Sam’s shoulders to pull him closer, and Sam laughs drunkenly, humourlessly, obliging.

When Sam starts moving his hand up and down, skin of his palm slicked with spit and precome, Lucifer’s legs nearly buckle. It seems to amuse his vessel, the reactions – the immediacy of them, the innocence and unselfconsciousness of them – he can’t quite hold back, too overwhelmed to do much other than gasp and fight to remain standing.

Neither of them lasts long – Sam’s drunk and Lucifer’s flying, hazy and limp against the wall, hands clutching at Sam’s shoulders. He’s no longer really aware of the noises he’s making, only of the warmth of Sam’s hand around him, the warmth and weight of Sam pressed close to him, the brightening sun of Sam’s soul flaring sharp with pleasure.

Perhaps, then, this is how he loves Sam, he thinks, as the pleasure peaks and he cries out with a voice tinged with angel – with his vessel, with this body he is fast coming to think of as _his_. With the sharp punch of an orgasm ripped from him without warning. Perhaps this is how humans love, sharp and hot and teetering, fleeting. The sensation is certainly addictive, somehow both satisfying him and sending the hunger in his stomach roaring higher, needing more, _craving_ more; his skin in nothing like enough contact with Sam’s…

And then Sam’s pulling away from him, face flushed red and sweat-beaded from his recent orgasm. Lucifer leans forward, eager and wanting, to lick it off, and Sam recoils from him.

There’s guilt in his vessel’s eyes, guilt and self-hatred and an empty loneliness that this sexual encounter has apparently failed to erase. Part of Lucifer feels angry at that, upset that his presence and touch and body weren’t enough to ease even a little of the suffering of Sam’s soul – but he cannot be upset with Sam’s soul, not for long, and cannot blame it for finding his cold body and rusted Grace unappealing, unsatisfying.

He will have to work harder.

Even as he wipes off as much come as he can from his skin with his fingers, pulls up his underwear and pants, fiddling with the awkward little buttons and zip, he reaches out with his Grace and presses tentative tendrils against the still-present cracks in Sam’s soul. They haven’t healed, not exactly – may never heal, because the idealised first love that Sam and Jess shared was bright and beautiful, and to have it torn away like that… – but six months of life on the road, life in Dean’s pocket, life spent unleashing his anger on the monsters that have crossed their paths have softened the edges somewhat. They are no longer jagged razor-edges slashed across his soul, but dents, scars, a little ragged around the edges but soft to the touch.

He can do little for them, but soothe, press with his cold Grace and hope it can breathe some life back into Sam’s tired soul. He does so, as he fights with the button on his pants – apparently, orgasms make human’s hands shake whether or not they are being inhabited by an archangel of almost unlimited power, something he stores away for later exploration. He presses his Grace in cool curls around Sam’s soul, like the coils of a snake, and whispers to it, _you are loved_.

He’s unsure if it works, if Sam even feels it, but when he finishes doing up his pants and looks up, Sam looks a little less angry, a little less guilty. More tired, without pent-up emotion to keep him going, but softened at the edges, like the scars on his soul. He’s sorted himself out, much quicker than Lucifer had, fingers working with the speed of familiarity.

They stand together in the alleyway in silence for a long moment, staring at each other through the gloom. Sam has his hands wedged in his pockets, Lucifer’s held loose at his sides – he’s painfully aware of the drying come on them, evidence of his and Sam’s copulation.

Evidence of yet another pathetically human practice he’s indulged himself in. He can’t bring himself to be disgusted at himself for it, though, can’t bring himself to regret that moment of white-blinding pleasure where his Grace seemed pressed so close to Sam’s soul that they could have been simply one person.

“…Sorry,” says Sam, eventually, alcohol still thick on his breath and in his mind, but the word seems clear enough. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t- this was a mistake, I didn’t- I’m not-”  
“Don’t apologise,” says Lucifer, after a long moment, unable to help the way his vessel’s face softens and droops a little at the words – unhappiness, he realises. He’s displaying unhappiness. “I- liked it.”  
Sam nods, rubbing the back of his neck, unsure of what to say. Being drunk is doing nothing to help his coherency. “Oh. Uh, good. But, um- I need to- I’m gonna- leave, I-” He trails off again, glancing over his shoulder, and then back to Lucifer, like he’s anxious Lucifer’s going to be angry.

Lucifer is not angry. He could never be angry with Sam. He’s sad, though – or rather, his vessel is, mourning the chance of getting another shot of chemical bliss at Sam’s touch – a little displeased that his time in his vessel’s presence is so short, this time around. “Very well,” he says, dipping his head. “Thank you, Sam.”

It’s only after the words have left his mouth that he realises Sam mentioned his name, just as Lucifer never offered his; thankfully, the alcohol seems to have dulled Sam’s memory enough for him not to realise that. Instead of recoiling, or frowning, or seeming remotely suspicious, he simply nods again at Lucifer, expression unreadable. “You’re welcome, I guess,” he mutters, and there’s something like bitterness in his tone as he turns and walks down the alley, heading for the dusty street-lamp light of the streets.

Lucifer flees the moment Sam turns his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is "Me and Stenton" by Tom McRae. It doesn't exactly fit, re: lyrics (although some of the lines are alarmingly applicable), but I chose it more for the overall feel, which is gloriously downtempo and restless.


	8. Chapter 8

The events behind the bar have left him shaken, both physically and mentally. His vessel is still oddly lethargic and weak from the experience, shivery with sudden and unexpected aftershocks of pleasure; his Grace is off-balance and somehow both too tight and coiled loose at the same time. He doesn’t understand it, isn’t sure he even _likes_ it – but then the memory of Sam’s face comes back to him, the memory of Sam’s hand on him and the warm breath on his face, bright, hot chemical pleasure shooting through him, and finds it difficult to claim irritation at the apparent side-effects of their encounter.

If this is the price he pays for a single, tangible, _human_ moment with his vessel, then he will take it gladly.

He can feel Sam’s soul below him, see it as a brilliant thread of pearlescent silver snaking across the country as he flies through time, the landscape blurring and changing beneath him but Sam staying gorgeously constant.

At one point, the trail flickers, disappears – Lucifer doesn’t worry. He knows that, knows of Sam’s death at the hands of one of Azazel’s chosen few. Rage wells up in him at the thought of it, at the thought of everything Azazel has done to Sam, all the ways the demon has broken his vessel. Yes, it was in Lucifer’s name that he fed Sam his blood, made his vessel’s soul glow that little bit brighter. But it was not in Lucifer’s name that he killed Sam’s mother, slaughtered Sam’s first love, created a small army of chosen children, one of whom went on to kill his vessel.

If Azazel were still alive when Lucifer had risen, he would not have been for long.

He does not stop for Sam’s death. He knew it was going to happen, was prepared for it, and keeps on flying through the awkward _emptiness_ where his vessel’s soul should be. He doesn’t trust himself to land, doesn’t trust himself to keep control should he land and see the broken wreck Azazel has no doubt made of his beautiful Sam.

When Sam’s soul comes back, though, brighter and more glorious than ever for its few days in Heaven, Lucifer’s wings beat a little more easily and his Grace uncurls from its tight anxiety. He was not concerned, had known it would come to pass… but even so. The absence of his vessel was like a raw, itching wound against his light, a hole where the other part of him should have been. Having Sam back is relief unlike anything he’s ever known.

And then, suddenly, Sam’s soul… Sam’s soul goes dark and hollow. The bright light is bleached from it, cracks racing across its once-pearlescent surface as it crumbles and withers – not dies, because Sam’s still alive, still breathing, still walking, but just _breaks_.

Lucifer nearly falls out of time with the shock of it.

He rights himself, with an effort, wings fighting against the time stream to right himself and then drop out of it, circling around the blackening wreck of his vessel’s beautiful soul and frantically, desperately wondering what’s happened, what went wrong. There’s panic in his chest, tight and suffocating, and he dives, streaking towards Sam in utter confusion.

It takes him longer than he would have liked to find his vessel, broken soul shaking like a beaten animal inside his body, grief rolling off him in waves. It drops Lucifer out of the sky when the first wave hits him, sending him into stunned freefall. He only just rights himself before he hits the ocean, pulling himself up again and flying even faster towards Sam, fear tight in his throat.

He finds Sam sat on the floor of a grand house, his brother’s mauled body cradled in his arms, tears of denial and agony streaming down his face, and he understands.

_The righteous man must break in Hell for the first Seal to be broken_.

He knew it had to happen, knew it was foretold – he should have been expecting it, except Dean was not his vessel, Dean is Michael’s vessel, and Sam should hate him with all his heart as Lucifer does Michael… but Sam does not. Sam loves him, as keenly as Lucifer loved Michael before his brother cast him out, and now his soul is breaking under the weight of that love.

Lucifer perches, hidden, on the window ledge peering in, and wonders at the sudden tightness in his current vessel’s throat, at the violent and gut-wrenching need to go over and curl his arms around Sam and promise him that everything will be okay. He’s never been the mothering type – demons are a testament to that, his children run lawless and wrong – but for Sam, he wants to be, wants to take care of him and make everything okay, wants to promise him the world and _give_ it to him and make sure he never has to see the glittering trails of tears running down Sam’s face ever again.

He can’t do that, though, can’t even _touch_ his vessel for fear of breaking the rules and unleashing time’s aggressive elasticity upon his own person, something even an archangel would be hard-pressed to survive.

It makes him want to scream with his true voice until the windows shatter and his current vessel’s throat bleeds.

But that would break the rules, too, he suspects, so he forces himself to calm, forces himself to ignore the tight clench of his throat and the helpless bristle of his wings every time Sam’s grief hits him low and hard in the pit of his stomach. Instead, he reaches out with his Grace, feeds as much as he dares into the blackened, shrivelled husk that Sam’s soul has become, bleached barren and bare with grief and pain. It doesn’t help, doesn’t do a single thing, but Lucifer leaves it there anyways, coiled in the new cracks in Sam’s soul and shining silver in a pale imitation of the once-glory of Sam’s soul. Lucifer does not love it any less for its ruin, but it hurts him to see Sam hurting, in a way he could never have imagined before taking a vessel.

He sits there for a long time, for as long as Sam sits there, watching his vessel clutching at the lifeless body of his brother as the grief sinks into his skin and stains his bones with its taint. Lucifer is helpless to stop it, helpless to do anything than watch and mourn for Sam’s pain and to feed him as much Grace as he dares. The loss of it weakens him, makes his already strained wings ache against his back, but he would rather ache than have Sam’s soul die in his chest while he still lives.

“ _At the crossroads a second time_ ,” he whispers, watching his vessel rock backwards and forwards with his brother’s corpse in his arms, tears streaming clear and bright down his pale face. “ _Make the Devil change his mind._ I’m sorry, Sammy. I really, really am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's late, and a little short! I've been ill for the past few weeks (and still am), and I didn't have this chapter written in advance like the other ones... It's here now, though, so I hope you'll forgive me. :) Song for this chapter is "99 Problems" by Hugo.


	9. Chapter 9

When he lands next, it’s because his wings are tired, aching and trembling against his back. He’s an archangel, mighty and powerful despite his Fallen status, but he’s been trapped in the Cage for the past several millennia, true form cramped and compressed into a space where he couldn’t even stretch his wings. They’re still a little stiff, unused to the strain he’s been putting on them by travelling in the time stream, especially dipping in and out of it as often as he has been.

There’s a certain irony that he’s tiring himself out further by pulling himself from the grip of time to land, close to where he feels the silver thread of Sam’s soul, but he doesn’t care – the relief when he finally sets foot on solid ground, allows his aching wings to lower themselves and lie flat and still on the ground, nearly makes him groan.

He looks around when he lands, casting his Grace out to feel the lie of the land – he’s in the middle of a place that’s not quite nowhere but definitely isn’t _somewhere_ , scrubland and trees and cold wind whistling through them. Somewhere behind him, there’s a road, the occasional car driving past with a rumble of engine and snatches of song drawn out through opened windows.

“- _could have your choice of men, but I could never love again, he’s the only one-”_

The notes and words are whipped away by the wind and the speed the car is moving at, but Lucifer doesn’t care, isn’t listening. Instead, his eyes are following the dirt track that runs from the road, concealed behind a thick line of conifers, and leads down to a simple cabin embedded in the scrubby ground. It’s small and basic and the ground around it is overgrown with nettles and brambles, but there’s a familiar car parked by the door and a light on at one of the windows.

What is his vessel doing here?

He takes a step forward, intending to investigate, and then checks himself. He cannot be seen by Sam, not now, not like this – it’s one thing to visit his vessel when Sam was a child and his memory easily overwritten, another (more of a risk, even though it was an accident) to share pleasure with him whilst he was drunk in the dark, but for Sam to see him now would complicate negotiations when he gets back to the present unnecessarily.

It’s easy to weave a sheet of Grace around himself, pull the shadows close like a familiar coat, ease his way into the background of his surroundings. It’s not making himself invisible, not exactly; in a vessel, becoming completely unseeable is a highly complex feat. Matter does not take kindly to being forced through the changes required to make an object invisible. No, instead, he’s simply… heavily camouflaged, curled into the landscape and nestled there, snugly hidden by the countryside itself to everyone but those who look very carefully.

Only then does he step forward, a handful of strides across the thick-clumped grasses covering the ground, to stare into the cabin, searching for answers about his vessel’s presence here.

He finds them quickly – Sam sat loose-limbed and sprawled on an old sofa, a demon astride him (Ruby, he remembers, from Lilith’s reports that feel like they were made years ago). Despite the ease of his posture, he’s tense, anticipation and excitement and maybe just a little self-disgust making his soul spark and flare, vibrations of violent emotion running through it.

Even as he watches, the demon picks up a knife from the side table, raises it to her chest, draws a line with it across her collarbone and splits skin, exposing the livid red of human flesh and spilled blood. The excitement in Sam’s soul flares, increases, and he nearly _lunges_ forward, hands grasping at her, one at her shoulder and one on the small of her back to keep her still as he fixes his mouth over the wound and begins to drink.

Lucifer doesn’t fail to notice the way that, after a few minutes, he begins to rock his hips forward a little, pressing them into the softness between the demon’s legs where they are spread to allow her to straddle him.

It’s hard for him, to see Sam with someone else. He is jealous, after all – of his Father’s love, of humanity’s capacity for free will, of Sam’s love. It is in his nature to hunger, to desire. It is his fate to want what he cannot have; his Father has made sure of that, he thinks, with a burst of anger. Sam is _his_ , in ways he is only just beginning to realise he demands, in human ways. He doesn’t simply love his vessel because Sam was made for him, for only him, no longer loves Sam with the love one has for a favourite possession. He loves Sam with his Grace, with his identity.

Loves Sam, in fact, as an equal. A partner in crime, a partner in love, in body and soul. The idea both scares and excites him.

And his Father has made it so that he must relinquish possession of his vessel in order to free himself from his prison. It’s cruel, sadistic, and entirely in line with what he has come to understand of his Father’s sense of humour – God loves a good laugh, as long as it’s at your expense.

At the same time as the jealousy, though, there is another emotion, a far stranger one: pride. Lucifer is no stranger to pride, no stranger to being pleased with the works of himself or another, but he working out why he feels anything positive as he watches the person he wants for himself finding pleasure in another’s arms is difficult.

Eventually, though, he works it out. This is his boy king, the man in that room. This is his boy king, the man fucking into the demon with hard, brutal thrusts as she sits astride him, swallowing her cries with his own mouth. This is his boy king, savage and beautiful and terrifying and alluring, and Lucifer loves him for it.

The power rolling off Sam, high on demon blood and adrenaline as he is, is beautiful, a dark cloud of lust and rage and _ownership_ – not for anything in particular, but of himself, of his destiny. Sam like this is powerful and dangerous, and he knows it, revels in it.

Then the demon sinks down onto Sam’s cock for the last time, grinding her hips as she impales herself, throwing back her head to expose the lovely line of her throat as she comes with a cry he can’t hear but can well imagine.

The anger, the jealousy, the urge to burn and maim and kill, is overwhelming. Especially when, moments later, Sam buckles forward too, the hand in the demon’s hair tightening to drag her face up for a bruising, brutal kiss to hide the noise of his orgasm.

It’s reckless, stupid, but he can’t help himself. His Grace surges forward, called by the sudden brightening of Sam’s soul as his pleasure peaks, slams against the fragile, glass-wall barriers created by the demon’s hex bags and smashes through them with the ease only the power of an archangel can achieve. It’s the matter of a second of determined will to curl his Grace around the demon’s vessel, press it close to her soul, share in what she feels as ecstasy runs through her.

The sensation nearly drops him to the floor. Even his experience with Sam behind the bar, the hot, shocky shot of pleasure that had sent thrilling through him, is nothing compared to this. Perhaps because the demon’s vessel is a woman, perhaps because Sam is inside her, perhaps because the power from Sam thrumming in the air heightens it all – he doesn’t know. But the feel of Sam pressed deep and hot inside them, the damp expanse of Sam’s skin pressed against theirs, the heavy gasps of breathing in their ear… it’s too much, entirely too much, and they cry out as one, loud and wanton and wrecked.

Lucifer can see orgasms and their cheap, easy pleasure quickly becoming addictive.

As soon as the pleasure fades even a little, he realises what he’s done, realises the stupidity of it, and pulls away with a savage jerk of power. This is getting out of hand, again, his desire for Sam, his _want_ to be near Sam and touching Sam and wrapped in the brightness of Sam’s soul. He’d call it an obsession, if that didn’t sound so ridiculous. It is right and proper to care for his vessel, to desire closeness for his vessel – his vessel is made for him, after all, for him to inhabit and wear. As archangel and vessel, they will one day be as close as two living things can be.

(Except… except maybe, he doesn’t _want_ to be inside Sam, not like that, doesn’t want to wear him like a coat or a suit of armour. Doesn’t want to have Sam relegated to an impotent voice in the back of his head, to a fragment of a soul he must keep sedated for all eternity lest the pain and enormity of sharing headspace with an archangel drive him mad and destroy him completely. Maybe he wants to stay a separate entity to Sam, distinct but still close, curled around each other not as archangel and vessel but as two bodies sharing warmth and comfort. Maybe he wants to simply bask in the brilliant light of Sam’s soul  rather than dampening it with the blanket of his own Grace.)

(Maybe he should just carry on refusing to think any of this, and get on with the job at hand – Sam’s acquiescence to becoming his vessel, the apocalypse, Michael’s death. Maybe that would be best. No; that would _definitely_ be best.)

The rapid retreat of his power is not enough to hide the fact of what he has done, though. He knows the demon must have felt him, even if only a little, must have registered the brush of something foreign and ancient and powerful coiled around her vessel. He reprimands himself silently for being so stupid as he sees the post-orgasmic haze wipe itself from the demon’s eyes.

She’s watching the window, concern in her eyes, and Sam – sweaty and sated and panting – notices through his high, catching her delicate chin in one hand, his fingers looking massive next to the fine bones of her face.

He doesn’t need to be close enough to see their lips to know what they’re saying, when they start to speak.

 “Is everything okay?” Sam asks, voice a thick rasp of tired contentment, sex-roughened and low enough that it rumbles in his chest.  
“Yeah,” she says, still not taking her eyes off the window despite his attempts to coax her eyes back to his, concern written in the line of his brows that echoes the concern in hers. “Yeah, I just thought I felt… never mind.”

“What?” he pushes, following her gaze, peering out of the window himself. Neither of them can see him, Lucifer knows, carefully wrapped in Grace and shrouded in darkness as it is, but the sensation is still odd – the pair of them, staring in a direction that is roughly towards him, still joined by Sam’s softening cock pressed deep inside her. “There’s nothing there. No one knows where I am, and the hex bags are still working, right?”

The demon still doesn’t look convinced. “Right,” she murmurs, turning her eyes away from the window and looking back to Sam, pressing hands to the seat-slickness of his chest and leaning in to taste the side of his neck, her hair a curtain of black shielding her face from view. Sam, too, turns away, to rest his chin on the top of her head and sigh his contentment as his eyes dip closed, concentration returning to the pursuit of pleasure once again.

A moment later, though, there’s a brush of _something_ at the edge of his Grace, a questing tendril of power moving with a focus and determination that can only come from his vessel – it carries with it the thick taint of demon blood, and Lucifer recoils from it instinctively. It’s persistent, though, confused by his attempts to hide himself, trying to pry apart the layers of Grace he’s wrapped himself in. Sam’s searching for demons, for blackened souls to exorcise, not the rust-covered remnants of an angel’s former glory.

Reluctantly, casting one last glance back into the cottage and swallowing down thick, hot jealousy as he sees Sam rearranging his arms around the demon, lifting her from his lap as he stands and carries her over to the bed, he spreads his aching wings and flies fast away from the power of his boy king. The corruption of it follows him, but he is faster and stronger and eventually it falls away behind him, fading to nothing against the background blackness of Sam’s soul as he immerses himself in the stream of time yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter is "Jolene", covered by Miley Cyrus (don't knock it til you've heard it, okay?).


	10. Chapter 10

Even as he begins to ease his way into the material world (slowly, laboriously), Lucifer questions what, exactly, he’s doing. He’s not entirely sure why he bothered returning to Earth for this – Michael ‘s vessel is none of his concern, really, and if Michael cannot be bothered to attend the moment of his salvation then he, Lucifer, has no business here.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. He knows why he’s here, really; Sam.

His wings are heavy against his back, the beginnings of strain already hot and aching in the joints, unworked Grace protesting the sudden and constant movement. He has not flown like this – has not flown at all – for a long time, and for all that he can ignore the mild discomfort of it until he is physically unable to move any more, it irritates him. Once, when he was young, he flew through the entirety of space, setting the stars in motion and shaping them with skilled and gentle hands.

Now, he can barely manage an extended trip into his past. Oh, how the great have Fallen. If he weren’t so angry, so humiliated, there would almost be a poetic irony to it.

He is a little way from Dean’s grave when he drops into the sky, wings spreading wide to half his descent, the backs of them brushing the atmosphere, feathers curved out over the surface of the Earth. He doesn’t beat them, just drifts, easily, on the slightest currents of the material world over the trees beneath him. Searching.

It doesn’t take him long to find the place – the grave is simple, dug earth in a rough rectangle and a wooden cross marking its head. A slightly pathetic attempt at decoration but, he supposes, considering it’s in the middle of nowhere the cross is likely more of a marker as to its location than a serious monument.

Lucifer doesn’t need it; he could have found the grave even without it. The power stirring beneath it, no doubt caused by the imminent return of Dean’s soul  to his body, is marker enough for an archangel – or, indeed, to any being with half a brain. He notes that the animals of the area have already fled, no birdsong or rustling of undergrowth.

Even though the shifting power is not malevolent, they have the sense not to hang around.

He lands beside it, standing neatly by the makeshift headstone and peering curiously down at the turned earth, old enough that grass is starting to grow through the loosely-packed mud again.

His knowledge about the raising of Dean Winchester is limited – trapped in the Cage as he was at the time, only allowed occasional glimpses into the outside world and the workings of Hell through the messages Azazel and Lilith managed to get through to him. The appearance of Michael’s vessel in Hell, and the eventual breaking of him, though, was of great interest, so he knows a little. Knows that Dean was first Alistair’s canvas, and then his student; that it took thirty years for him to break; that he was rescued by a single angel when all the others had been struck down; and that the angel who eventually rescued him was swift and young and righteously angry.

No one knows the angel’s name, which is a shame. Lucifer would like to meet them, offer them his congratulations. Few angels have ever entered Hell, and even fewer have ever left, certainly none of them with a human soul.

He reaches out a hand to touch towards the soft earth of the grave, curious to see if there are any further stirrings of power beneath the ground, any signs that the return of Dean Winchester is imminent – and then freezes.

Even he, Fallen from Heaven and cut off from the chatter of the angelic host as he is, hears the resounding roar that tears through the air, through the very fabric of the universe, a bell tolling loud and exuberant in victory.

_Dean Winchester is saved._

A young angel, then, he thinks, inexperienced enough to not realise that few others of the host will give a damn about what he just accomplished – remarkable though it is. He has to admit that, even for an elder angel, it would be an extraordinary feat to snatch a soul from the tightly-clamped jaws of hell. For a seraph as young as this one seems to be, it is nothing short of miraculous.

Of course, Lucifer no longer believes in miracles. His Father is long gone, fled from this universe, and the host have descended into thinly-veiled chaos – they have no time to be handing out extraordinary occurrences to even the humans, as is their duty, let alone to the new soldiers in their ranks.

When he looks around him, he realises the roar has flattened trees all around the grave in a perfect circle, an impressive (if childish) display of Grace and power. The once-still earth of the grave is no longer still, shifting minutely in response to the movements beneath it. He can feel the tight press of the barrier between Hell and Earth, the way the whole area is distorting and _moving_ to accommodate it and the pressure of the Grace trying to shove its way through.

He spares a moment to be both amused an exasperated – the angel obviously has no finesse, no experience. Trying to punch a hole, tear a way through, as it currently is, is never going to work. If it were that simple, souls would wander back and forth all the time. The trick is to come at it sideways, slide between the worlds and then back onto Earth, not ram at it headfirst like an enraged bull.

What in his Father’s name are they _teaching_ young angels these days.

He settles back to watch their progress, the angel and the human soul carried close to something approximating its heart, leaning against a tree. He hums to himself softly as the angel continues to struggle against the barrier, gets nowhere, pours more power in and gets more frustrated. The tune is that of a song he’s heard somewhere, on his travels, although he can’t quite remember where, but it seems appropriate. “ _Oh Lazarus, how did your debts get paid?_ ” he murmurs to himself, and smiles at the irony. “ _Oh Lazarus, were you so afraid?_ ”

Eventually, after an hour or so – several days in Hell, and Lucifer’s honestly surprised the angel’s not completely exhausted by now, overrun with demons and torn apart of the shininess of its Grace – they break through, collapsing sideways just far enough to slip out of Hell and into the in-between. The angel seems to _get_ it then, works out how to do the little sideways-shuffle needed to get out into Earth.

For a second, they stay twined together, the angel and the human soul, curled several feet underground in what must be Dean Winchester’s grave. The angel seems reluctant to let go of him, and Lucifer cannot blame it; Dean Winchester’s soul is nothing like Sam’s, nowhere near as beautiful, but it is still spectacular. Eventually, though, the angel pulls itself away from the soul, detaching the tiny ball of copper light and sliding it back where it belongs inside Dean Winchester’s body’s chest.

And then, quite suddenly, the angel is gone.

When the earth beneath the grave begins to move in earnest – not the product of a determined but unskilled angel trying to tear through, but under the frantic, scrabbling hands of a human clawing its way towards the light – Lucifer pulls himself together and prepares to leave. It has always amazed him, how fiercely humans fight for their continued existence, despite the fact that few (if any) of them seem to be _happy_ with it, but now is not the time for watching. He needs to leave, before Dean Winchester breaches the surface, or risk interfering with causality.

He spreads his wings with a low groan, rolling and flexing the joints in an attempt to work the stiffness out. The rest has done them good, but there is still a residual objection in his Grace to the movement.

His Grace will have to deal with it. He has a lot further to fly before returning to the present time, and he _will_ make it back in decent time. Lucifer is not one to let his physical limitations slow him down.

He eases back into time slowly, though, despite his determination to not let the tiredness and aches slow him down. No sense in pushing harder than he has to and injuring himself, which would be an irritating spanner in the works for his plans – which do not include being stuck in the past for several weeks whilst his Grace repairs tears and bruises in itself. Eventually, though, he’s back in the stream, coasting easily in the reduced gravity and easier mechanics of time’s flow, letting it carry him along on outstretched wings.

Despite already being back in the clutches of the stream of time, Lucifer can spot the exact moment Sam finds his brother, when the two are reunited once more. He can see it in the way Sam’s soul almost cracks in two; the hard, dry, dull thing it has become shatters and breaks open, revealing the core of it once more. Opalescent and shining, Lucifer smiles to himself as he watches its thread progress beneath him once more.

It may cause complications later on, he knows, his decision not to act  - likely more complications than he has avoided by refusing to meddle, not risking the backlash the action would undoubtedly cause. But he cannot bring himself to regret it.

If Dean’s life is what it takes to restore Sam to his previous happiness and beauty, then it is a price Lucifer will happily and willingly pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter is one of my favourite songs ever - "Blood on my Name" by the Wright Brothers. It works so beautifully for Supernatural, you'd almost think it was written for it...


	11. Chapter 11

He is painstakingly winging his way back to the present when he feels it – a massive outpouring of power, the taint of it souring even the stream of time as he flies through it, making it sluggish and murky. He knows what it is, of course. This close to the trail of Sam’s soul, this close to the present, the only thing it could possibly be is his own rising.

It’s risky, even considering landing. If he times it wrong, if he interferes… Interfering in the past at any point in time is a bad idea, given time’s propensity to bend and warp its way back to how events occurred originally, heedless to the fate of the meddler. Elastic will only stretch so far before it recoils, heedless of causing damage to the one who stretched it.

The fact that he will be, in part, observing _himself_ , only makes things more complicated. Personal timelines are doubly complex, and so interfering (intentionally or otherwise) in them only makes things more complicated.

On the other hand… this is the last time he will be able to see his vessel before returning to the present, where Sam’s soul is concealed from him, stolen or hidden away by beings unknown – although he has his suspicions, now, after what he has seen. He will be checking for the angel, when he returns to the future, that much is for sure.

For a long moment, he hovers, thoughtful. And then – because he has never been very good at worrying about risks, because he has never been very good at turning his back on a dangerous challenge – he spreads his wings wide and swoops down, out of the murky whirlpool time has become (too many possibilities, too many offshoots and alternatives, too much power in too concentrated an area) to land back on Earth for the last time. In the past, at least.

He’s outside a church, when he opens his eyes, his wings tucked away inside his vessel. They’re aching, too-hot and trembling after their overexertions, and he knows using them is going to smart for days after he returns to the present. Even with the demon blood he knows he will have to drink to maintain Nick’s vessel in a reasonable shape, to make up for his impurities and defects, this little stunt of his is going to cause problems with his form.

The church is familiar, a little – he didn’t see it when he rose, lacking the eyes to do so at that point, felt only the shape and strength of the place as he passed through it and burnt it out, sensed only the darkness that tainted the Earth where it stood. That’s what he can feel now, the same creeping blackness in its foundations that has nothing to do with the clean hum of power already building beneath his feet where, thousands of miles in a direction the human tongue cannot describe, he himself is readying his Grace for freedom.

He has arrived at a late stage in the proceedings. Already, the Impala is here, heat still rolling off of her engine and tyres where the engine has only just stopped running. He smoothes a hand over the black of her bonnet, enjoying the heat-soaked metal beneath his fingers for a moment as the steady heartbeat of power pulsing out from the church washes through his Grace.

An occasion like this ought to have music, he reasons. Of all the things he has learnt, trawling through Sam’s past, it is that an important moment should not be without music, and he has found himself strangely in support of the notion. With a thought the window is open and the radio is on, music spilling out into the still night air. He would worry about Sam or Dean hearing, coming to investigate – but they are deep inside the church and, even if they could hear, have larger things to worry about.

“ _-seal my heart and break my pride, I’ve nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide-”_

The song that echoes out of the radio, a little scratchy with interference – Lucifer’s proximity is not helping with the distortion of space and physics that is already occurring here to allow the rising to take place – but audible. He drums his fingers against the warm metal of the car as he listens, feeling the concentration of hot and heady power already saturating the air rise. It’s like a humming sound, deep in his bones, vibrating through his Grace with a sense of _rightness_ that makes him smile.

_“-align my heart, my body, my mind, to face what I’ve done and do my-”_

The buzzing hum reaches a peak and the radio cuts out, leaving a screeching knife of static in its wake that he can’t even be bothered to deal with – his entire focus is on the church, on his vessel inside, on the waves of power he can feeling rolling off of him even from here. Sam’s power is different to that of the stuff grinding through the locks of the Cage and setting him free, a distinct flavour that he can sense even over

He allows himself a little burst of pride for how far Sam has come, how much Sam has accomplished, as he feels the power tighten and constrict around the soul-remnants of his faithful partner-in-crime.

As the last traces of life fade from Lilith’s vessel, the sigils written in blood on the floor begin to glow and white light floods the chapel. He doesn’t need to be in there to see it, doesn’t even need to reach out to Sam’s soul and touch it to check – something he is fast becoming reluctant to do, violating his vessel’s privacy without his permission, no matter how much it pleases Lucifer to bask in the brilliant strength of Sam’s soul – because he just _knows_.

The same as he knows this is his moment of triumph, his moment of glory. His Grace knows it too, reaches out through his vessel to the power building around the church despite his attempts to restrain it and recall it, alive and singing to the sound of his ascension.

His pleasure, his _victory_ is soured by Sam’s fear, his shame at what he’s done, the horror of the way Dean’s looking at him – all the emotions he can feel rolling off his vessel’s soul, rolling from the sparkling-white of a power high to the cracked grey of despair.

Despite Sam’s turmoil, he’s still left panting with the rush of it, though, eyes wide and bright as his Grace glows hot and wild inside him.

There’s a second, vicious thrill of pleasure that runs through him, though, when Dean stabs Ruby. He feels the mutilated remains of her soul flicker, and then pinch out. Gone. The one who tried to steal his vessel from him, who tried to seduce _Sam_ away from him, is dead.

A moment later, he feels, reluctantly, ashamed of himself – because the demon is, _was_ a loyal servant, a good child. She was only a means to an end, but she performed her role admirably, knowing the risks, because of her love for him. Because of her loyalty. He has no fondness for demons in general, the squabbling, backstabbing, ineffectual little things that he has created; but his special ones, his chosen children, the ones who serve him by offering up their lives…

He may be Fallen, may be prideful, but he knows how to respect sacrifice.

Another flare of power – they’re coming in waves, now, rolling walls of energy strong enough that even the humans must be able to feel them, must be able to feel the absoluteness and infiniteness of the creature that is rising before their very eyes. He wishes he could be there to see it, their reactions to his rising, but he cannot (cutting it fine enough already, the locks on the Cage all but disintegrated by the huge machine set in motion by Dean’s breaking in Hell and turned to full speed by Sam’s murder of Lilith) and, sadly, neither can they.

It pains him because Dean, at least, could stand to learn some humility; he is Michael’s vessel, after all, and for all that Lucifer is accused of pride, he learnt that particular sin from his brother. But Sam will do no good to him with his eyes burned out; and even if Lucifer could reconstruct them painstakingly from his Grace, he knows now what harming Dean does to Sam. He never, ever wants to inflict that on Sam again.

So, with a flicker of wings and a thought, he scoops the two humans up into the palm of his hand as the final lock on the Cage breaks and pulls them free of the church, soaring high above to deposit them carefully on a plane passing through the airspace close by. He wishes he could stay to ensure that Sam is okay, that the plane stays in the air and is not disrupted by the power being tossed out of the steadily-disintegrating building, but he needs to leave this time as soon as he can.

With a last, longing brush of Grace against Sam’s soul – because who knows how long it will take him to find his vessel’s physical body back in the present – he turns and points his wings towards the stars, driving himself upwards with powerful, almost vicious wingbeats, and only daring to re-enter the flow of time again when he is several thousand light years away and far enough that himself down on Earth will not feel the folds in the universe that occur to allow his passage out of corporeality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus christ this is so late and I'm so, so sorry. Everything's been a little manic lately. Thanks, all, for your patience! Only one more chapter to go now ~~that I still haven't written oops.~~
> 
> Song from this chapter is "Dustbowl Dance" by Mumford and Sons, which is awesome and angry and fits Lucifer sort of perfectly.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, this has taken so long for me to finish, I'm so sorry. To everyone who hasn't completely given up on me, thank you so much. You guys rock.

By the time he makes it back to the present, Lucifer is exhausted.  His wings hang limp and aching, tucked loosely against his back, and he knows he has overextended himself – he’ll have to wait for a few days to recharge, especially considering he wasn’t exactly at full power before setting off on his trip. All in all, he still has no real idea where Sam is, has made himself tired and vulnerable, and narrowly avoided being obliterated by time for all the little prods and pokes he’s given it..

His little jaunt through the decades was, he thinks, a very ill-advised venture.

He still can’t find it in himself to regret it, though. The shape of Sam’s soul is familiar to him now, more so than it ever was when he was trapped in the Cage, Sam’s past and the events that have shaped him graven into Lucifer’s bones also. They are tied tight together by destiny, bound by the prophesies his Father had written, and now they are held together also by the weight of shared history.

The word _love_ , when applied to a human, is repulsive. Applied to Sam Winchester, though, it is _right_.

It’s a terrifying thought, one that echoes weirdly in his Grace as he casts about the universe in a faint hope that now, now he knows the shape and light and beauty of it so well, he will be able to find Sam Winchester. His hopes are in vain, though – its silvery light is still hidden, concealed by powers he suspects may belong to the angel he saw drag Dean Winchester back to life.

He remembers hearing rumours about that angel. Intriguing ones. His anger towards the creature is tempered by curiosity, a thoughtful consideration that, perhaps, they are alike. That Castiel could be turned, be moved to stand by his side in the war against Heaven and all its corrupt, decaying glory.

But that’s a thought for another time, to be stored away until it is relevant. For now, he needs to find somewhere safe to rest, recuperate. His vessel needs to be healed, and his Grace needs to replenish itself.

It’s only as he spreads his wings one last time, aching feathers clawing their way through the sky as the place they attach to his vessel bleeds Grace and red with overuse, that he realises he does not have to find Sam Winchester to find his soul.

His walk through the kingdom of the Dreaming does not take long. He is familiar with it, with its ways and paths, and the brightness of Sam Winchester’s soul lights his way. Morpheus watches him, he has no doubt, from the highest towers of the palace that presides over all of the Dreaming, and he dips his head in respect to the Lord of Dreams – they have not always had the most friendly of relationships and, although he doubts Morpheus would interrupt his journey now, a little courtesy never goes amiss.

Sam’s dream is easy enough to find. It is small, unremarkable, a delicate cocoon of dark, grey-washed greens and blues, on the edges of the Dreaming where reality still seeps into things and the dreams are easy to enter. Through it all, Sam’s soul is visible, a flame of pearly light in the centre of the mess he’s pulled around himself in his sleep.

It’s the work of moments to slip inside it. The dream resists for a second, and then gives, lets Lucifer push his way through its thin membrane and slide inside. There’s only one other person in the room with Sam, an imaginary girl with blonde hair whose echo of a soul he recognises from when it was smeared over the charred ruins he saw earlier. She’s the only construct in the room, though, so – rather than build his own, which takes time Lucifer has and energy he doesn’t – he slips into her, allowing his Grace to tweak her features to fit those of his vessel.

It’s easy, so easy, and Lucifer has less than a second to be pleased with the results, delighted at finally being in the same room as his vessel, before Sam’s reaction to his presence makes anger rise in his stomach.

“Lucifer,” says Sam, and the tight fear in his voice has Lucifer shifting backwards, hands raised as the human recoils from him. The reaction is not unexpected, but it still hurts, and he watches Sam back away from him with sad eyes.  
“You are a hard one to find, Sam,” he says, because it’s true, because there is still a haze around Sam’s body that is blocking him from view and Lucifer _hates it._ “Harder than most humans. I don't suppose you'd tell me where you are?”

“What do you want with me?” asks Sam, and Lucifer’s heart breaks a little at the idea his vessel, the one who is supposed to _know_ him more completely than any other creature, has misinterpreted his intentions so dramatically.

Perhaps his Father had lied when he’d said Sam was Lucifer’s perfect gift.

“Thanks to you, I walk the earth.” Lucifer keeps his tone gentle, modulated, refusing to show the fear or desperation or confusion that his irritatingly _human_ body is awash with. “I want to give you a gift. I want to give you _everything_.” And he does, really. Anything Sam asks for, anything within his power – even anything outside his power – will be his. Lucifer swears it.

“I don't want anything from you,” says Sam stiffly, disgustedly, as if any gift from Lucifer’s hands would be tainted by association and Lucifer’s Grace ripples with anger, fractures brittle and sharp with heartbreak at his true vessel’s continual hatred.   
It just makes what he has to say to Sam next that much worse. “I'm so sorry, Sam,” he says, voice quiet. “I- I really am. But Nick here is just an improvisation. Plan B. He can barely contain me without spontaneously combusting.”

When Sam says, “What are you talking about?” there’s genuine confusion in his voice. Lucifer can’t quite believe he hasn’t guessed yet, doesn’t feel it, _understand_ it on a level far beyond conscious comprehension.

He stands up, moves forward, drawn by the beautiful, electric pull of Sam’s soul. “Why do you think you were in that chapel? You're the one, Sam.” He fights the urge to touch, to caress, to press himself as close to Sam as he can get without sliding inside of him and settling between his ribs. Right now, such a gesture would be unwelcome. “You're my vessel. My true vessel.”

“No.” There’s verbal denial, horror in his eyes, but Sam’s soul screams _yes_ , presses closer to Lucifer in recognition. It’s not quite what Lucifer wants – he wants love, wants everything, wants Sam, entire – but it’s enough to soothe the anxious rolling of his Grace a little.

“Yes,” he says, gently. He doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want to upset Sam, but the sooner he accepts this, the better. The sooner he realises that _Lucifer_ is what his empty soul is searching for, the sooner they’ll be one, and Lucifer can cleanse the world of everything that is wrong with it, just for Sam. For his beautiful Boy King.

“No. That'll never happen.”

“I'm sorry, but it will. I will find you.” The denial is beginning to irritate him. “And when I do, you will let me in. I'm sure of it.”

Understanding spreads across Sam’s face, along with hope – hope that he’ll be able to keep Lucifer out. “You need my consent.”  
Lucifer knows it’s not meant to come out as a half-question, half-revelation, but the fact that it does makes him _angry_. The fact that his true vessel thinks he would force his way in, even if he could, hurts. Even if he was a demon, could move in without a _yes_ , he wouldn’t. Because Sam is special, deserves to be valued, because this is a _partnership_.

He doesn’t say any of that, though. “Of course. I'm an angel.

“I’ll kill myself before letting you in,” says Sam, quiet and determined, and everything in Lucifer’s being starts screaming all at once.

_NO._

“I'll just bring you back.” It’s stupid and childish and probably not the best thing to say, but he says it anyway, sighing. Speaking to Sam is more difficult than he’d anticipated – the ache of wanting to be with his true vessel, to complete what is missing in Sam, is evidently not reciprocated.

He tries again. “Sam. My heart breaks for you. The weight on your shoulders, what you've done, what you still have to do. It is more than anyone could bear.” He remembers what he’s seen, what Sam’s life has been in the past, the prayers he’s heard hurled into the dark oblivion with confusion, unhappiness, _anger_ , eventually fading to silence, and his Grace aches. “If there was some other way...but there isn't. I will never lie to you. I will never trick you. But you will say yes to me.”

“You're wrong.” The speed of it, the confidence of it, hurts. Every word out of Sam’s mouth hurts.

“I'm not. I think I know you better than you know yourself.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Lucifer knows they’re the wrong ones, wants to scrabble to get them back as he feels the hardness sweeping across Sam’s soul, but it’s too late.

Sam doesn’t rage or lash out like Lucifer had half-expected, though. Instead, he curls in on himself a little, a child who has spent his whole life with adults telling them they know him better than he knows himself. Lucifer wants to kick himself. “Why me?” he asks tiredly, an edge of resignation to his voice that makes Lucifer’s heart ache and tells him his time is up.

He smiles gently at his true vessel, love in his eyes though he knows Sam can’t see it, and spreads his wings. “Because it had to be you, Sam. It always had to be you.”

By the time Sam looks up, Lucifer’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who spotted the Sandman reference, kudos to you for having read such lovely comics (anyone who didn't, go read the Sandman comics, and then the Lucifer comics, and then cry a lot because they're perfect and full of angst).
> 
> It feels really, really weird to have this done now, after so long (FYSL have actually held and finished another fanworks exchange in the time it's taken for me to finish this oops OTL). To everyone who's stuck with me through this (and the hideous gaps between updates), thank you so much, and I'm sorry for being terrible with schedules and getting distracted by nanowrimo. I hope you've enjoyed it! I've certainly enjoyed writing it - it's been something of an adventure, considering I usually write far shorter pieces...
> 
> (There'll be a graphic out in a few days with llinks to the fic and the fanmix so that those of you who are on tumblr can reblog it with everything in one place if you want!)


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